Siena - where the Palio Games Takes Place

Italian Trip - Day 5

St. Peters Basilica, Vatican

We went to the Vatican after breakfast. Normally it would have been very convenient to go there by Metro but this morning there was bus replacement instead. There were lots to see we  spent far more time than we had budgeted for.  The Vatican Museum is a huge museum. Before we could get to the Sistine Chapel, we had to go though a maze of other exhibits which took quite sometime. Sistine Chapel is located at the end of the entire exhibits.

The La Pieta, St, Peters Basilica

When we finally went into the Sistine Chapel, we were with hundreds of other people standing in this big hall, no chairs, very crowded, looking up to the ceiling to admire all the paintings. We saw many bible stories and characters on the ceiling.  The paintings certainly demonstrate the genius and hard work of Michelangelo.  He spent years suspended from the ceiling and painted the ceiling with extraordinary beauty and precision. Some of the 3 dimensional paintings were so real that we could not tell whether some of the columns, figures on the walls were real or painted work!  We were also amazed by the restoration work undertaken by the curators at the Vatican Museums.  The colours are as fresh as right after Michelangelo completed the fresco paintings.

We ate at a restaurant right outside the museum before we went to pick up our luggage at Inn Givoy. We did not see Givoy so we just left the hotel but she came running after us to kiss us goodbye. What a warm hostess!  Unfortunately when we were to the Rome Termini, the last direct train to Siena had already left.  The only option was to book the 10:30 pm train to Siena.  There was a small inconvenience, however.  This train stopped at Chiusi at 12 midnight and we waited for the 4:30 am train to Siena. We and two other passengers were stranded in Chiusi at midnight.  We tried  to sleep in the sitting position for four hours, with limited success.

Siena - Where the Palio Games Take Place Every Year

Our connected train came at round 5a.m. At around 6:00 am, we stumbled to the Albergo Canon D'Oro and slept for 5 hours until checkout time.  We kept our luggage at the hotel and made the best of our remaining 5 hours to explore Siena.  As soon as we stepped out of our hotel we were overwhelmed by the sight of a complete medieval town right in front of us!  A tunnel like passageway took us from the hotel to a Piazza at Siena and right away we saw churches and buildings packed together in a charming way that only medieval era buildings can evoke.

The Winners of Palio Games Parading in Siena

A little later we heard drum beats, cheering and marching noises. A large group of young men leading at the front, flags waving marching through the streets and the famous Piazza el Campo, followed by women and other people like family members of the team and tourists as well. We were told that this was the parade of the winning team for the annual Palio Game ( a horse racing game held at the Piazza). We missed it by a couple of days, how unfortunate!

We walked around the narrow winding street and were awed by the beauty of the individual houses as well as the whole town.  We thought of our son Eric, who learned about Medieval Times when he was in elementary school and did a big project on it years ago.  We remembered how he was fascinated by all the Medieval and knights stuffs. He would have loved seeing all the neat houses lining side by side in a circular shape encircling the old town with its thick huge city walls, towers and turrets, narrow winding streets and the Torture Museum in this well preserved Medieval town. ( We walked by the Torture Museum but did not go in there.)

Piazza Del Campo, Siena, Italy - A Charming Medieval Town

Our stay in Siena was only a few hours as we had to board the late afternoon train to Florence. But it gave us a glimpse of what a Medieval Town looked like. It was exactly like the the pictures we saw in the children's storybooks. I always thought that those pictures of old houses and buildings in Cinderellas and Sleeping Beauty were only fairy tales houses. Now that we have seen them with our own eyes; these stories come alive for us.

S.& R. T.  Siena, Italy
Aug. 17, 2012