Wednesday 14th May

An outing to Sienna was on the itinerary today, so we got up and out of the house as soon as possible, as we fancied taking the scenic route to avoid the autostrade. This ended up to be well worth it as we came across a stunning field of poppies that up until now I hadn’t been able to capture on the camera as Leon has always been flying past these vistas at an amazing speed. But today luckily, we had been enjoying the scenery on the way and we were able to stop without causing a major road block. I was dying to jump amongst the poppies but my hay fever was telling me otherwise, nevertheless Charlotte was too excited to worry about her allergies and ran full bore into the field while Leon took the appealing photograph. This had to be taken very quickly as Charlotte soon realised that a field full of poppies also has a field full of bees….he he!

As we approached Siena the usual parking problems arose as Siena is on the tourist route and parking is near to impossible to obtain, after several tours around the walled city, I was quite ready to walk miles and park back at our villa. Leon finally spotted a car park that I was sure only a smart car could park in, but Leon amazed us with his incredible parallel parking, while I had a cow or two watching the traffic jam we were causing while trying to park with not a centimeter to spare (no wonder everyone thinks Leonardo is Italian).

Siena’s claim to fame is its exciting Palio horse race that is held in its medieval square twice a year, one in July and another in August and its neighbours or “contrade” of Siena have been competing since 1656, so rivalries run deep. It is a bareback race first recorded in 1283 and only lasts 90 seconds! Since we would be here and are close to Sienna, our mission of the day was to enquire as to how to go about getting tickets to watch this exciting historical event. But it was not meant to be, our budget couldn’t afford the $360 euro’s per person to watch the acclaimed race!!!! A gelato was in order to curb our disappointment……But you could imagine our delight when we went to explore the famous square, to find a film crew and actors reenacting the Palio. We got to see locals dressed up in the traditional clothes and colors of the race and lots of Italians chanting their rival banter for the filming, so by chance we got to get a glimpse of what it might be like anyway.

We enjoyed exploring Sienna and after a lot of walking through a maze of narrow streets we headed back to the car, to the challenge of releasing it from its tight position. Thankfully the Italians are very patient when they can see you in such a snug park or maybe it just that they want to jump straight into the one you have just left.