Burnt Siena

We're not sure what we ever did to Saint Catherine to make her hate us so much, but for some reason, she had it out for us while we were in her hometown of Siena. It was such a beautiful city, but all hell broke loose once we entered the city gates. I guess we should have been tipped off by the giant arch leading into the city that read, "Ospedale Psichiatrico," because we sure did feel like we were in Crazytown.

First of all, Siena is proud to call itself a "pedestrian city," meaning that traffic is really not permitted within the town except for residents and hotel guests. We, being hotel guests, thought that meant that we could drive to our hotel. So we're scooting through town and a police officer rolls down his window, shakes his finger at us and says, "No OWto!" aka "No auto!" So we park outside the city and walk. We're thinking, man, they must be serious about this whole pedestrian thing. Not so. We must have dodged 100 cars and trucks and were actually almost killed by a moped while in this so-called pedestrian town. So when they said "No OWto," they just meant ours.

Last night, we were yelled at by the very greasy receptionist at our hotel because we forgot to leave our key with him when we went out for the night. And then today, as we were pulling out of the pay parking lot, our ticket wouldn't work, leaving us trapped for good 45 minutes. Although beautiful, we found it difficult and are glad to be out of there.

But Siena wasn't all bad. We actually met some very cool people while we were there. At dinner on Sunday night, we struck up a conversation with a Parisian couple, Jean-Luc and Bridgitte. They were an older, hippy-ish pair who had driven from their home in Paris to Tuscany on a motorcycle. Jennifer brought out her mad French skills and I nodded along, trying to understand and speak as much as I could. Luckily, Jean-Luc was fluent in English, so we were able to converse in both English and French. After talking and laughing all night, Jean-Luc ordered a round of "digestif" which must be French for "battery acid" because it did not go down easily and I'm not sure our digestif tracks really appreciated it. Great night, good times.

The next night at dinner, we shared a table with a couple from Virginia. Willie and Julia were as southern as it gets and it was nice to hear some familiar accents.

So today, we packed up the Panda and headed for Florence. Florence has already been so much easier to navigate even though it's a bigger town. Sadly, we had to return Francesca to the Hertz office so it's up to the buses and trains to get us where we need to go. Our hotel room here in Florence is much nicer than the one in Siena, which was a cross between a jail cell and the room where Winona Ryder stayed in "Girl Interrupted."

Tomorrow we do the tourist thing one last time. Jennifer and I have decided that we don't really like sight-seeing and are going to try to book activities from now on. Seeing church after church and duomo after duomo can only be interesting for so long. But Florence has so many awesome sights to see that we can't pass it up just yet. We'll save the activities like hiking, salsa dancing, and horseback riding for our other stops.

We'll write more when we can! We miss you all and would love to hear from you!

By the way, James and Erin....you just won major points for being the first to post comments!! We love you!!!

xoxoxoxox