Italy - Greece Vacation 1999 - Siena

14 May 1999

A look at Siena.

In line at the Uffizi (in Florence). We're guessing it's a 90 minute wait.

Siena was great (12th and 13th). A very gothic little town, with buildings towering above narrow streets. It's like walking through the bottom of a canyon.

Siena distilled the style and flavor of Rome, into a much smaller area. The shops were immaculate and very trendy. People didn't dress in the same urban style as Rome, but still very fashionable.

The hotel (Hotel Duomo) was excellent. It had a very inconspicuous entrace, and expanded into a maze of buildings behind the narrow street. The ceilings were extremely tall, like the Hotel Romano, which seems surprising given how little real estate they have to work with. Amsterdam was the same way: I wonder if people living in compact cities built tall ceilings to compensate for the lack of floor space. It works for me -- the rooms have felt pretty spacious.

After dropping our bags off in the hotel (and by the way, Siena is a terrible place to drag bags around -- a lot of staircases and tiny winding roads), we wandered around the city for a while.

After doing some shopping and grabbing a snack at "the finest patisserie in Siena," we looked for something to eat. We first tried our guidebook's recommendation, a small restaurant on a very sharply tilted street. It was so tilted that the outside tables and chairs had stilts on one side. While we were waiting, a young lady leaned over a little too far and fell over, almost bringing the table with her. We laughed (rude, but you would too), but in the end we had to leave since they were fully booked with reservations.

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[links to a larger image]')" onmouseout="resetHover()" >Randy at the top of the tower in Siena ("Not me, man").

Forrest and Tamara at the top of the tower in Siena. Tamara, like Chris, has some sort of strange Darwin-defying love of sheer drops.

The next day we climbed up the tower in the main square. It had a great spiral staircase, over 400 steps in all. From the top we had great views of the city.

Coming back down the tower in Siena. Forrest and Tamara are also leaning into the center well, but they're several levels down.

We tried to look around the Duomo (a striped cathedral at the top of the city), but we were kicked out for wearing shorts.

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