This morning we packed up our things, strolled around the town one last time, then boarded our train to Tuscany.

The train once again passed the Carrera mountains with it’s impressive marble crags. We struck up a conversation with an Australian couple who were traveling through Europe, then planned to visit New York and San Francisco, to break up what would otherwise be an unbearable 28 hour flight back to Sydney.

We switched trains in Pisa, then Empoli, to head toward Sienna, the last train, to our surprise, was a diesel train. All of the other trains having been electric.
The Tuscan countryside is just a you might have seen it described in a painting or on the artwork on a bottle of wine. Gently rolling hills and open countryside. It looks and feels a lot like Napa, only with castles.

Most of the Italian rail stations are just old concrete platforms with status monitors which sometimes work and elevators that rarely do. As we arrived at the Siena station it looked as though it might be worse, many of the other tracks had underbrush growing through the rails and the metal was corroding on the top (a sure sign of non-use) but when we got to the platform everything was clean and modern. Escalators, glass elevators, conveyor walkways, services for the blind and the like. Siena, although being a smaller city obviously has done well with its local wine industry.

The station opens up into a mall. We stopped at this grocery store for a quick bite to eat, then went back to the station to purchase our tickets for Rome the next day.

The best way, we learned, to get to the old city center of Siena is now the new mall we had just been in. “Just take the escalator”, the sign said. What it didn’t say was that it is the steepest and tallest escalator we have ever seen. It has 9 sections of escalator, one right after the next.

We found our hotel and after a brief swim to cool off, we headed for the old city.

Siena was once amongst the 5 largest cities in all Europe, rivaling even Paris. They had a centuries long rivalry with Florence which went back and forth until Siena suffered a plague in 1348 which Florence took advantage of attacking the city and trade routes again and again until it was no longer a significant city, and left the city center largely the same today as it was then (90,000 people in the 12th century and 60,000 today)

Quite serendipitously, we arrived just in time for the Palio di Siena, a horse race dating back to medieval times between the various towns which made up the city’s battalions. Each section of the stands filled with members from a particular town try to out cheer and out sing one another in anticipation of the race. The riders, riding bareback, ride the short race around the piazza three times. The victors taking great pride in victory for their town. It’s a big televised event in this area, my arm (and camera) even made it on Italian TV that night.

As the festivities ended and the mass of people squeezed through the tiny holes in the bleachers, we made our way out as well. We explored the city for a while, then ate dinner.

Tomorrow, Rome.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 30th, 2012 at 7:59 am and is filed under Italy. You can follow responses to this entry through the Comments RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.