14 Aug – Siena, Assisi

We left Florence and headed for Siena, Florence's traditional rival. They also have very different architectural styles. We came to Siena just in time. On Saturday (two days away) is a big horse race which pits 17 different districts of Siena against each other in a short (90 second) horse race around the Piazza di Campo. Everyone was wearing flags for their district, and there was a bunch of about 40 girls at a cafe all wearing one districts flag singing for ages. I bought a couple of flags, one with a tortoise on it the other with a snail. The track the horses run around is uneven, small and rough as guts. I'd be surprised if many made it to the end. Also here is a cathedral (they're supposed to have amazing marble floor inlays which are only uncovered in August...but they weren't uncovered this time) a museum (which was meant to have a good view of the Piazza, but I couldn't find it) a crypt (with some 800 year old paintings which they only re-discovered in 1999) and a baptistery (which was small and fairly much on par with others I've seen). The whole place was nice, but fairly busy with the race coming up, so we decided to head on to Assisi for the night (also since we couldn't find the place we were going to try stay at).

Assisi is really nice. Small, clean and interesting. It's all different colour stone to other cities, and the hotel we picked is very comfortable and the guy working here is friendly. We went straight out to the Basilica of Saint Francis, which closed just after we got there. On the way we stopped at the numerous little art galleries around the town, some of which were pretty cool, and I'm going to have to look into getting some prints of some of the stuff as the guy who's stuff I liked didn't have the one I wanted in stock.

Dinner was fairly standard (except that they didn't take down Dad's order), and after eating I went to look at the fort at the top of the hill. It was pretty cool since it was closed and no one was around so I walked off the path around the side and found a little grave. I headed back to the room, and we got to bed pretty early since we have a long drive down south tomorrow.

Signing off...