Siena, Italy

Wow, I haven't posted since June!  That's just crazy.  I missed the whole month of July!  Things have just been really busy - Really great, but busy!  Last week we went to Siena, Italy with Kevin's family for his cousin's wedding.  We've never been to Italy, and it was amaaazing!!  This whole post will be about our time in Siena, and then I'll do a separate post about our time in the middle of the week when we went to the Villa for the wedding.  The Villa was about 30 minutes outside of Siena, so our experience there was very different than our time in the town of Siena! 

I loved Siena SO much.  It was a very walkable town, and all of the food and wine and coffee was amazing. We arrived there on a Sunday late afternoon, so we found a restaurant for a late lunch.  And let me tell you, I immediately fell in love with the food.  I ordered one of the traditional dishes of Siena which is this thicker spaghetti pasta (called "pici") and a cheese and pepper sauce (pici cacio e pepe).  I know cheese and pepper sauce doesn't SOUND amazing, but holy crap... It was seriously the best pasta dish I've ever had. And Kevin's aunt Eileen ordered a caprese salad, and the mozzarella ball was HUGE, so the whole table ended up helping her out with that!  The mozzarella ball was seriously bigger than a softball, and it was DELICIOUS cheese. We also had a beer that was available everywhere there, and it was SO delicious and refreshing. The rest of the day we just hung out in the stunning apartment that Kevin's parents were staying in (and Kevin's sisters were staying there too), because it had air conditioning and the AirBnB that Kevin and I rented did not have AC!  The average temp in Siena at this time of year is 85 degrees, so we thought we'd be fine without AC... But the temps while we were there hovered around 100 degrees, so it was HOT. 

The view from Kevin's parents' apartment!  Amazing. 

A parade also took place while we were hanging out, and there was lots of flag throwing!  If you've seen Under the Tuscan Sun, you know all about throwing the flags! 

The next day we went on a walking tour of Siena that Kevin's Dad had arranged with this local woman named Viviana.  We learned SO much about Siena, especially about the 17 districts of Siena (they all have fun names, like Dragon district, Caterpillar district, Unicorn district, etc) and how to look for the signs on the walls etc to see which district you're currently in, and we learned about the big horse race that happens twice per year in Siena which is called the Palio, and it's only about 90 seconds long and it's some laps right around the town's center area and it's BRUTAL. The jockeys are given these bamboo rods to whip their horses and the other jockeys (they're totally allowed to hit the other jockeys...), and it's not uncommon for the jockeys to die. 10 of the 17 districts participate in each (and all 17 districts will get to participate every year since there are two races per year), and it's a BIG DEAL.  You can google it and read all about it and see some footage. OH, and did I happen to mention that the jockeys ride bareback?  Yeah, it's crazy.  We also spent a lot of time in the Duomo, which is the huge cathedral in Siena. 

This is in the town's center (Piazza del Campo), which is where the Palio horse race happens!

The Duomo

The Duomo.  Right below the windows is statues of 172 popes' heads. Creepy!! 

Part of the floor of the Duomo. 

Another part of the floor of the Duomo. 

The ceiling in the Duomo.  Amazing!! 

The floor in the Duomo again. 

A room inside the Duomo.  Overwhelmingly beautiful!! 

Four of these statues are by Michelangelo!  Amazing! 

That's Viviana on the left!  And this is the main building in the Dragon district (so those are Dragon flags), so right out front there is the fountain where all of the babies in the Dragon district are baptized.  Every district has a main building, a fountain for baptizing that district's babies, and their own district flags that depict their animal, etc.  

This was our whole group on the walking tour!  Kevin's mom wasn't able to make it on the tour because she'd injured her knee, so Mook HILARIOUSLY photoshopped a picture of her looking out their apartment window onto that building behind us!  You can see that the window doesn't really match with that building, which makes it even funnier. 

This was later that evening when we all relaxed and had some wine and snacks in the town center! 

 Later in the week (after we returned to Siena after the wedding was over), we met up with Kevin's cousin Brendan and his girlfriend Hannah.  Brendan is in the Air Force and is stationed in Italy (kinda near Venice), and he'd been in Iraq for the past 9 months.  He literally just returned to Italy a few days before we got there.  So, it was great to see him!

The town's center at nighttime!  So pretty. 

Kevin, Mo, Mook, Brendan, and Hannah!  We were at this bar that overlooked the town's center. 

Our last day in Siena! That's the whole gang walking to this amazing pizza place. 

The view from our table at the amazing pizza place!! 

Stunning.  Siena is so beautiful!! 

This was my pizza!  It had really delicious Italian ham.  

These drinks are called Aperol Spritzes, and Brendan is obsessed with them, so we all had a lot of them!  They are quite refreshing. 

So beautiful!! 

Mook enjoying some tiramisu on our last evening!  

The view of the Duomo from our AirBnB on the last night!  So pretty. 

 So that was all of our time in the town of Siena during our trip!  I'll do another post (hopefully today...) about our time in the middle of the week that we drove about 30 minutes to the Villa for the wedding!