The Siena Portage

Well, it felt like a portage, with all the schlepping. And I thought I was packing light...

Safe and sound in Siena today. I didn't arrive until around 4 pm so haven't had a lot of time to snoop, but have seen enough to know that it is going to be amazing! I will spend tomorrow checking it out, and may take a day trip to San Gimignano on Tuesday.

The down side is that there is no wireless internet here because of the walls, so I have to work from a net cafe and they restrict uploads of pictures to 3 because of their bandwidth limitations. So the glossy little blog is going to be downsized for a bit. That doesn't matter so much today, because there aren't a lot of pictures, but I've heard from a few of you that they are reminding you of past trips here.

I have been here long enough to check out the shower (another phone booth). The hotel is really interesting - you can access it from 2 different streets. One door gets you in on the main floor, and the other, from the street behind, gets you in on the third floor. For those of you still struggling with the math - it is very, very, very hilly here!

My cold is still there, but hasn't gotten worse. I've found a little tratorria down the street that has soup, so am going there when done here, and to bed early tonight, to try to get rid of this sniffle.

The pictures... the first one is of old hardware found on the walls all around the town, for tying up your horse. The second is Il Campo, which is very close to my hotel - about 5 minutes down the street. The third one... Well. They don't advertise this is the books I have read, but the things they do with gelato in Siena are downright immoral, as you can see. That isn't food. That's porn. Clearly I'm in the right place!

Thanks for reading, everybody. Later...