Siena & San Giminango

Siena's Duomo
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The five of us, Kathy, Marcie, Tom, Sara, and I, took a day trip on the 25th to Siena and then San Giminango. In Siena we had a great day exploring churches, eating a giant lunch, and taking in the central square where the Palio horse race occurs every year.

A great moment happened at a local restaurant in Siena when a large party was eating in an adjacent room to ours. They were celebrating a graduation of some sort and were enjoying the wine like none other. Tom stuck his head in and made a toast, and then they invited Sara in for some cake and drink. Jealousy aside it was a great moment!!! The Italians sure do love blonde hair...The "I'm from California" line seems to really do it for Italians.

Standing in the square where the Palio is run
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Following Siena, we headed off for San Giminango, a beautiful little medieval town in the Tuscan hillside. The place seemed so close on the map, but it took us about two hours to drive there. The town was little, nice, and peaceful, very similar to most Tuscan towns. The town has 16 towers which gives it a very unique skyline as you approach it from the road. It was here that we ran into the only rude European of our entire trip. Sara went into a store to purchase something and tried to be very polite and explain what she wanted in butchered Italian. Instead of appreciating Sara's attempt, the woman behind the counter just gave Sara a dirty look and said, "Please don't speak Italian." Maybe Sara's accent wasn't the best in the world but this just left us with a bad taste in our mouths about San Giminango.