Siena, Home Base in Tuscany
9/15/22-9/20/22 (T)
We chose Siena for our home base while exploring Tuscany. It was a great choice! Special shout out to our friend, L, who we met on the West Highland Way, for recommending it. Siena is an easy train ride from Florence (it’s also easy to go to/from Rome). It’s a 45-minute to an hour-and-a-half drive from most places to visit in Tuscany, including the Chianti region, Pienza, and Montalcino.
Now, the train ride is easy as long as it’s not cancelled! Almost all of our train trips in Italy were seamless except this one. The time had passed for our train to leave and the platform number was still absent from the board. 30 minutes past departure, it showed up. We walked to the platform and shortly after the train arrived. Everyone boarded. Then there was an announcement, only in Italian, and everyone started to exit the train. We figured out our train was cancelled and thought we figured out an alternate route. However, we weren’t so sure after we boarded the other train and it left. Confused, we got off at the next stop. Much to our relief, there was a schedule board showing a train going to Siena from our platform in about an hour. That train was on time and headed toward the right place, so we hopped on, and in a couple of hours, we arrived in Siena.
We arrived in the late afternoon on the 15th and took escalator after escalator up the train station to get to the street. The train and bus station are at the bottom of a super steep hill so we were thankful for the escalators. It was a 5-minute walk to our hotel, Hotel Italia, which is a great location if you’re basing your Tuscany stay in Siena, but if you’re going to only explore Siena, you may want to find somewhere closer to the city center. Hotel Italia is about a 20-minute walk from the city center. We spent the evening relaxing.
On the 16th, we spent the full day meandering around the streets of Siena, marveling at the red brick, medieval architecture throughout town. We found Siena to be even more picturesque than Florence. It also has a beautiful cathedral similar to the one in Florence. Unfortunately, it was booked on the day we tried to go, so book in advance. We did, however, go into an old medieval church that was recommended by one of our waitresses. I’m pretty sure we found a black Mary and Jesus painting which was really cool.
The main event for Tuscany began on the 17th, riding a motorcycle through the countryside and visiting many towns! We were originally going to pick it up in the morning, but a fierce rainstorm swept through, which delayed us until the afternoon. We took a local bus (if you take the local bus, you will need to buy a bus ticket in a tobacco shop) to Pienza where we picked up the shiny, red, BMW bike and zoomed off.
The rest of our time in Siena was really just used as our home base. However, one of the most Italian things happened on Friday night. Around midnight, we thought we heard faint sounds of… a man singing opera. Then it went away. We opened the window. Not long after, we heard it again! It sounded like it was coming from somewhere close. Did we dare investigate? The song continued and our curiosity led us to go down to the main level and walked us outside. Just to our left, a couple of buildings away, a group of family and friends were gathered around a table of a closed trattoria, drinking wine, talking, and smoking cigarettes. Every few minutes, an elderly man belted out a song. He was extremely talented! We felt like we had seats to a secret neighborhood opera. After about 10 minutes, we decided to go back inside because we didn’t want to weird out the group by lurking for too long.
On the 20th, we boarded a train bound for Rome.