I’ve been in Siena since Saturday but haven’t blogged once, except to tell you about London, so here’s the deal…
Siena is beautiful, there’s no doubt about that. The city is old and remotely quiet with cobblestone roads built on upwards and downwards hills that are getting easier to walk- and regain my breath- as the days go on. The windows have those wooden shutters painted in blues and reds and greens with tiny pots of flowers on the windowsills like something out of My House in Umbria. The streets look like big alleyways with storefront and restaurant windows except these main road alleyways also serve as highways being that cars, buses, and motorcycles whip around the corners and speed down the streets. Joey knows a girl who got her foot run over by a car in Florence and like… now I get how that happened.
It was a total culture shock when we went to a restaurant and ordered chicken parmesan to be stared at like we had three heads. No chicken parm? No calamari fritti? I thought these were classic Italian dishes? WTF? Cul-ture shock. We did manage to find some good gnocchi in a four-cheese sauce, a caprice salad (not really a salad just mozzarella and tomato), a pizza appetizer from every place we go and I even got a white slice with prosciutto. So delish. It’s been really hard to find chicken here too! We finally got a good piece of grilled chicken with a little bit of olive oil and lemon on it. The gelato is fabulous! I had hazelnut gelato on a cone with homemade whipped cream that was out of this world. Speaking of hazelnut- to those of you camp people who only got Nutella as a special visiting day treat and finished it by the time Olympics broke out like us Lokanda-ers- they have it here like its strawberry jam or Skippy peanut butter, favorite. Other than that tonight me and Joey split the grilled chicken and this cheese and pesto ravioli with a tomato cream and black truffle sauce on top. Basically, we were licking the plate.
The central point of the “city” is the Piazza del Campo. Us dumb Americans just call it “the circle”. There are restaurants and souvenir shops lining the circle on one side and a big church with a bell and tower clock on the other. All of the restaurants have nice outdoor seating and they are all connected with similar menus. After asking for tiramisu and watching our waiter go from our restaurant to the one next door, I’m convinced they’re all the same thing. The middle of the campo is an open field except its cobblestone and not grass. Still kids and couples and families sit and lay on the stone and talk or eat gelato or do homework or kiss. Being single and living in this city must be devastating because the PDA is an orange on the terrorist scale and every beautiful guy is with a fugly girl. Other than seeing couples there are so many cute dogs. These dogs aren’t like the obese slobbery American dogs. They’re posh and polished and even a not so big animal lover like myself finds them adorable.
Like usual Pinot Grigio accompanies us at most dinners and some of our checks can be paid in AIFS food stamps… were on Italian welfare.
TGIF. We signed up for a cooking class for tonight and a tour in San Gimignano tomorrow . Sunday were supposed to go to the torture museum so we should be in for a fun filled weekend. More about that and classes later.
Grandma: Since the TV here is all in Italian, I've decided to start watching Parenthood. Just one more show for us to talk about!!
Daddie: I've fallen asleep without the TV two nights in a row now. Italy changes you.
Ciao Bella!
P.S. IT’S SNOWING IN SIENA!!
