Many years ago I spent some time in San Gimignano. I had no money but lots of time and made the most of it. I have good memories of my time there and it will be interesting to see if what I remember resembles what I see.
I like the idea of doing a theme for the day. Yesterday was "Under the Tuscan Sun." Trite. Today's is "Sleepless in Siena." One day I will come up with something original but just go with me on this.
When we met the
host of the failed AirBnb in Siena he showed us into the place that we were
supposed to have rented. Just outside of
the gates of town, it looked kind of nice inasmuch as it would have been quiet
at night (we try to stay outside of city centers to avoid the incessant noise
of European cities). He showed us the
plumbing problem: when the neighbors upstairs flushed their toilet, it came
showering down on our toilet. He said it
wasn’t a big inconvenience and gave us the option of staying.
The place had an odd odor, so no thanks. So we took the place that was 500 m away in
the center of town. At least it was a
place to stay. We wandered around town a
bit and tried to get an invite to a big bbq at a piazza that looked really good
but we were unsuccessful.
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| Unique lights all over Siena |
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| There's a party going on, but no invitation for us... |
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| The bbq smelled so good... |
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| I think the guy in red put the word out on us |
But it was the
single noisiest place we have ever stayed.
There was a bar across the street and the noise continued at an
unsleepable level until 0430. Argh. Lorie got some sleep after that, and I slept
until about 0600 but after that it was time to go.
So we loaded up
and headed down the road on a beautiful morning. A short ride today, just under 50 km but with
1000 m of climbing, mostly in the first 20 km.
It warmed up pretty quickly and as soon as we’d crested the first climb
we found a nice place to have coffee – not even a village, just a group of
houses with a café. They were restoring
the church next door and had what appeared to be a long way to go.
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| Strade bianca again. It is super fun to ride and there is absolutely no traffic! |
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| Except the occasional UK hiker bunch; they're so, well, orgainized |
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| Tuscany |
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| A castle every now and then |
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| San Gimignano off in the distance |
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| Our coffee stop for the morning |
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| 600 year old building -- like new |
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| 700 year old church -- a fixer upper |
We could see
San Gimignano, our destination, on the horizon and it gave us inspiration as
the little hills rolled under us. It was
a very nice ride on tiny, untraveled roads, with about 15 km of strade Bianca thrown
in. As we approached San Gimignano the
road tipped up, as we knew it would, and we reverted back to our theme of “slow
and steady.”
We are staying
in another Agritourismo just outside of the city proper. We were greeted by a little dog that looks
just like our Risi – except this guy’s ears were down and he was really grumpy whereas Risi would have been wiggling all over.
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| Risi's doppelganger in Italy. Except he is a bit of a shit. |
San Gimignano
itself is tiny and it sits atop another high hill. Originally an Etruscan outpost, it thrived in
the early millennia AD as a trading route but was pretty devastated by the
plague of the early next-century. The
village recovered after that and was relatively prosperous. Early in the 20th century some
bright local figured out that they can make more money on a Disneyland-type
model than agriculture and they ran with it.
Today it is a contrast in history versus economy. The former is dominated by the beautiful
village with its seven towers (I actually counted nine, but I guess that some
do not (literally) measure up). The
later dominated by every single cubby hole in the village dedicated to some schmaltzy
retail establishment or a café or a bar, or whatever.
All that said,
we enjoyed walking around town – it took only about 30 minutes. After that we had great sandwiches and we
paid a king’s ransom for a couple of negronis and spent an hour or two watching
the visitors walk by, and a wedding party.
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| We were super hungry. Great paninis |
Negronis were in order and the wedding party was an extra (though her expression says "Really?, I am doing this?")
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| Negronis and odd snacks |
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| Is it too late to reconsider? |
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| San Gimignano, around town |
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| San Gimignano, around town |
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| San Gimignano, the main piazza |
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| San Gimignano, around town |
We bought some
snacks for tonight and hoofed it back to the Agritourismo. Along the way we got douched by agrichemicals
being sprayed by a guy “fogging” his olive trees. Not to be outdone, a moment later the guy
across the road got his fogger going for the pesticides being sprayed on the
grapes. We ran from that onslaught and
jumped into the shower to was the Monsanto/Bayer chemi-stew off.
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| Kills the bugs and us, too? |
I will say
this: there must be a huge quantity of agrichemicals being used on olives and
vineyards – you can smell it whenever you go by. Sorry to end on a sour note but we can taste the agrichems. We had a nice bottle of Sangiovese to get rid of the taste. Irony? You decide.
Tomorrow we head a bit up, then a lot dow toward the Tyrrenhian coast to Lucca. We're looking forward to that walled city with no hills!
Arrivedirci!
