Tuscan Travels

This morning, 26th Ocober, we had the first frost. At least, the car had ice on the windscreen, just after sunrise when I went out to buy fresh bread. It's just thirteen days since we left Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, in warm sunshine, to drive down to Siena in Tuscany to finish our short holiday.

We were now five friends in two cars, Roz and Bob having left by train for Venice, Florence and Rome before flying back to California after another week. We set off heading south across the interminable Lombardy plain, on what must be the most boring and ugly drives in europe, flat as a board and as picturesque as an enormous industrial estate in decline. Siena was 450 kilometres distant and not until Bologna (300 kilometres) can you find anything worth looking at from the motorway.

We knew that Bologna to Siena via Florence meant crossing the Apennine mountains and sure enough, green hills hove into view a few kilometres north of Bologna. We swept into them, climbing steadily, by-passing the city with welcome views of farms and woodlands. I was a bit surprised to find the maximum altitude attained was only 750 metres (according to Fifi, our GPS locator) and the motorway was in pretty poor condition at this point, two lanes only and an uneven surface (not unusual for Italy, even on newly-laid carriageways). 

The route by-passed Florence as we left the 'mountains' passing through more ugly industrial activity and yet more road construction work with the city itself just a smudge in the haze to the east of us. We were now well and truly in Tuscany.

Thomas Patch, an English painter living in Florence painted this 'Distant View of Florence' in 1763. The words 'spinning' and 'grave' come to mind.

Later in the afternoon we were threading our way through the northern suburbs of Siena towards the walled city centre with some trepidation. Complex meeting arrangements had been made; we were not going to be able to park or even unload our luggage near our apartment as it was inside the mediaeval city walls, legal access by vehicle being only available to residents. The plan was, to telephone Jacopo, an old friend and former work-colleague of Marina through whom the accommodation had been arranged. His son-in-law, Pino (who, we imagined, was the owner of the apartment), would drive to meet us, transfer our luggage to his car and then somehow show us where to park and lead us to the apartment at the same time.

All this came to pass- eventually. The apartment was on a steep bluff, just inside the city walls on the north-east side of the city, at the corner of the Piazza San Francesco

I found this photo which actually shows the apartment and part of the mediaeval wall - our green balcony on the yellow building where we took our evening drinks just visible above the trees in front of the looming mass of the Basilica of San Francesco. 

There is an alley between the two buildings which leads to a series of escalators descending to the street and the public car park where we had to leave our vehicles - at 30 euros a day each.

There is no doubt that Siena is one of the world's surviving wonders. The 'Campo' in the centre is a marvel and must not be missed. Of course, we expected and were not wrong in assuming that to sit there at one of the numerous bars and cafés to admire the view while sipping a refreshing drink would not be the cheapest way to quench our thirsts. Beers were three times normal price and nearly nine euros for a gin-and-tonic was mildly eye-watering (not due to the alcoholic strength, I might add).

If one's 'thing' is to visit, study, imbibe the magnificent monuments crammed into a marvel surviving from the middle ages such as Siena, then one could spend a week or more there, discovering new joys by the hour. After two days however, having been let down on various lodging arrangements (Marina had to move twice to nearby B&Bs at the last minute) and worrying somewhat about the security of the vehicles and the haemorrhaging euro in our pockets, we decided to review the situation. Personally, I found the bane of Siena was the noise and local pollution of constant roaring, rattling mopeds weaving in and out of the pedestrians in the narrow streets. The noise was amplified as in canyons so eating out on the pavement, although pleasant in the warm weather, was a spoilt experience.

In addition, Michel was obviously contracting a cold, or worse so we made a trip out to the hilltop village of San Gimignano as everyone should, who visits this region, then headed back to France on the third day.  Michel needed to see a GP and we had decided to settle for a visit to Biot, near Antibes on the Côte d'Azur as a possible rest stop for last part of our trip.