Today we went on a trip from the ship to Tuscany. It's somewhere that I have always wanted to go to see the rolling hills, the farmhouses with pencil thin cyprus trees and beautiful umbrella trees.
We got my wish and some very dramatic weather too.
Our first stop was the hilltop village of San Gimigiano, famous for it's huge towers that were built to show off the wealth of the residents.
Originally there was 72 of these strange monstrosities, but only 14 remain, so imagine what it looked like originally. (Little van for scale.)
They made a dramatic site, and the village also had a lovely peaceful monastery, obviously with views of the towers.
As if that's not enough for one village, it also had a gelato school, and allegedly sold the best gelato in the world.
I possibly made a mistake and bought my gelato from 'The most famous gelato in the world' shop, but then a few metres later we came across 'The best gelato in the world' sign, but anyway, mine was very good.
Next was lunch with wine tasting. A good time was had by all, although hardly anyone bought any of the bottles afterwards as the cost was eye watering.
On to Siena, famous in my mind for one thing - the horse racing scenes round the square.
Our guide was very thorough though and had other things to show us.
We spent lots of time inside two churches, the first of which was definitely missable, and I have searched our photos app and neither of us took any pictures.
But the second was spectacular.
It looked magnificent and the sun was in just the right angle to make the whole thing glow.
There was a big queue to get inside, but again it was incredible.
The floor was covered with huge mosaic scenes, and for most of the year they are covered over and protected by carpets as there are church services most days. For reasons that I didn't quite hear, they are only uncovered for a few weeks each year, and we were lucky enough to see them.
Our local guide walked very slowly explaining all of them to us, and we saw that our bus guide who was with us all day was looking annoyed. They turned off the microphone and had an angry Italian style conversation and then carried on.
The reason for this argument soon became clear as when we eventually arrived at the main square and the location of the Palio horse race, we only had eight minutes to either have a quick look or visit the public toilets before we had to rush back to the coach.
You could tell that everyone was disappointed and probably desperate for a coffee and a sit down, but we had to get back to the ship. By this time our bus guide was looking frantic, and we got back with 15 minutes to spare before the ship was due to leave.
Ps, we knew that the ship wouldn't leave without us, but the guide was supposed to get us back with 45 minutes to spare so maybe she got into trouble with her boss.
No comments:
Post a Comment