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After the long day yesterday, we didn’t make any plans in the early morning. After a leisurely breakfast, we left for the town of Siena, only 20 minutes away.

Siena is another medieval walled city that was the center of the Siena kingdom. It was a big rival to Frienza (Florence), with frequent wars between them. As is typical, Siena is sitting on top of a large hill, and nowadays there are no vehicles inside without permits. This means the parking lots are outside the wall and down the hill.

Based on earlier research, we picked Parking Lot 4, which was supposed to have an escalator! It turned out to be a great choice. We had to walk up hill into the city wall for about 50 yards, but then a series of escalators took us up into the town.

Siena was bit more crowded and without any of the towers still surviving like San Gimignano. What is unique is the gigantic Piazza del Campo in the center of town. Del Campo is not flat, but somewhat shaped like a scallop shell, about 500 ft x 200 ft. It’s large enough that they run horse races in the Piazza.

The Palio di Siena is a horse race held twice each year, in July and August. Ten horses and riders, bareback and dressed in the appropriate colours, represent ten of the seventeen contrade, or city wards, in a tradition dating back to the 17th century. The piazza is filled with a layer of sand or saw dust for the horses to run on. This draws huge crowds and the wards race more for bragging rights over prizes.

We paid to get into the Siena Cathedral. The ticket booth line was very long, so I found a travel company that sold them online. Unfortunately, they had problems delivering the tickets to us via email. I chatted with them via their support line, but still did not get the emails. I got a link via text, but it didn’t work. I got through downloading the iphone app, which just got me vouchers for the tickets to exchange for the real tickets at the, you guessed it, the ticket booth. So we decided to continue exploring Siena, get lunch, and then try again on the way back. Luckily, after lunch, the app now pointed to a nearby visitor center for voucher redemption and we were able to get our tickets. I finally received the email on our way out of the city 5 hours later. Can not recommend using Headout as a travel tool.

Siena Cathedral is covered inside and outside with white and green marble. Very beautiful. May make you think of Beetlejuice with the striped pillars.

We got back to Castel Pietraio for our scheduled castle tour and wine tasting, provided by Julia. The original square castle building was built in the 8th century as more of a defensive soldier barracks guarding the northern Siena border from the Florentines. Later the building was used as a home for the land owner of the surrounding serf fields, slowly expanding the original building with a kitchen, cask room, chapel, and other living quarters to what now exists. The current owner is a descendent of that original land owner, who runs the small winery and runs it as a agriturismo. Julia pointed out that there is a dormant volcano nearby and the castle is built directly on top of a lava flow for its foundation.

Their wine had been harvested and was fermenting in either concrete or stainless steel tanks. They find the concrete tanks actually give a purer taste to the Chiantis, while the stainless steel work well for the white wines. We sampled two wines – Chardonnay and Chianti Superiore. We had already enjoyed the Chianti at our evening happy hours.

After completing the wine tasting, we were ready to eat. I remembered a little tavern just outside San Gimignano, right near the highway exit, Bar dell’ Orso. Julia had never been there and warned it was a bit small, but I was able to book a reservation using Google Maps. So off we went. When we arrived, they weren’t aware of our reservation but did set up a table for eight. We had a light dinner, soups, panni’s, deli meat assortment, and small pasta dishes. And then a band started to set up and by 9 began to play American/British oldies! By then the restaurant staff told us we really needed to give up our table for another party reservation. We were welcome to continue drinking, just not at our table.

Bu then it was getting pretty cool outside, so we finished our beers and went home.