As I mentioned before, Mondays are generally the day major museums are closed. We had heard that it’s a good idea to also explore outside of Florence if we could. Since we could, we booked The Best of Tuscany Tour with WalkAbout through our hotel.
Unfortunately, out of the entire week, this was the ONLY day that it rained. When I say rain, I mean poured! Luckily, I had prepared with my rain jacket and even an umbrella. So, though we were slightly dampened, the tour was still a good one.
We started in Siena, which is apparently the biggest rival city to Florence. It is divided into 10 neighborhoods that have their own symbols and seals. This is mostly important for the annual horse races – Palio di Siena – that are held in the main square. It’s an interesting story to learn. The city of Siena seemed pretty with lots of red brick, though very small. After getting the walking tour, visiting the main church, and feeling tired – it was time for a stop at Illy’s for a coffee.
(By the way, Starbucks has no stores in all of Italy…SHOCKING!)
From Siena, we stopped for our lunch at an organic farm to taste the Chianti wines famous in the area and some Italian dishes. It was quite tasty and the weather started to clear up, which was nice.
After lunch, we headed to the town nicknamed the “Manhattan of Italy”, San Gimignano. The bus was a bit perkier from our lunch beverages. π The town is a UNESCO site for Architectural Heritage due to the number of towers that were built by families feuding over power in the town. There wasn’t much to do in our free time here, but we walked around and considered getting gelato from the World’s Best Ice Cream at Gelateria di Piazza, but it somehow felt too cliche to do it despite the other tourists lining up for it.
From San Gimignano, we continued on our way to Pisa. One really can’t be in Tuscany and not see the Leaning Tower of Pisa! We took our cheesy photos and enjoyed the cultural square there, but by this point we were pretty tired. We did get a train ride tour of the town of Pisa, which is mostly a university town, they say. It’s not somewhere I’d like to go to school, but it could be worse. π
Thus ended our tour and after finding some grub, we collapsed back at the hotel. The museums are coming up next!
-T
