Siena

Siena!

Speaking of Hill Towns, probably the best known one is Siena. It's probably the biggest too and it's home to a famous Duomo.

The dining room table also served as our morning trip-planning center. Here Skip and Greg study their information on Siena. Little did they know how much "fun" we would have driving into and getting lost in Siena's labyrinth of tiny one-way and dead end streets. With me in the driver's seat and Skip, Josie & Lorri along for the ride, we accidentally entered the old part of town looking for parking. We took one wrong turn after another and it seemed like we were stuck in an inescapable maze. Finally we started asking people "uscita?", Italian for exit, and eventually found our way out and found a place to park (luckily, because it was market day - never go to Siena on a Wednesday).

After all that, we finally walked back into town and found John, Jan, Greg and Kelly on the main piazza, "Il Campo" the site of the famous Paleo horse races during the summer. We soon found out that they had a similar experience to ours as far as driving the maze of Siena, but instead of finding a way out, Greg chose to park the car (tickets be damned!) and head for the nearest pub for a sedative beer or two. Which is where we found John & Greg - at the Pub on the second floor in the middle of the photo on the left. Skip and I joined Greg and John for a while and the girls looked for stuff to buy. One (or two) of the most memorable (and needed) beers I've ever had.