San Gimignano and Siena

Although the idea of Tuscany is very appealing on paper, it decided to rain the entirety of our time in the region making it somewhat unpleasant. 

We had a few lucky hours of sunshine on our way to Siena where we stopped at a delightful mountain top village called San Gimignano. This turned into a fun though accidental game of 'pronounce-Gimignano-differently-every-time-we-say-it'; our Italian language skills leave something to be desired methinks. 

The local specialty appeared to be wild boar which although I didn't get the chance to try it, had my imagination running wild with images of Obelix hunting. 

There were also a tonne of Torture museums in the city which I very much wanted to go into but we were a little pressed on time and money. After wandering the city and taking in the sites, we drove on to Siena. 

in Siena we found a nice campsite about half an hour from the city, the weather was looking ominous so we pitched the tent and took the bus to the central city. It then decided to start raining so after buying some food supplies we gapped it back to the campsite. Well, that is, we would have if we hadn't taken the wrong bus and had to loop back to the city and get on another one. With that hour delay we ended up having a picnic next to our tent while the weather still held and then went to bed.

The next morning we decided to see Siena properly, which involved a wonderful day of getting lost down cobbled side-streets, wandering past churches,and so on. My photos half worked today, so some photos are available. (Internet-or lack there of is extremely frustrating).

                                                      

We also spent some time in Il Campo-the central square.

And a little church.

                                                   

I mainly wanted to get to a church within siena which had a saints head in it (how cool is that? ?) But sadly by the time I reached it, it had closed. I was devistated as it was my main excitement for siena.

I tried to cheer myself up with this burial instead but to no avail. 

Maybe the catacombs in paris will cheer me up.  

My favorite thing we saw was the Duomo. 

The architecture was insanely cool and somewhat Egyptian looking I thought. It was so busy it was almost ugly, but so interesting it was beautiful.