Siena, and chefs come to our house

Another beautiful day and our plan is to see Siena.  It's not too far from the house - maybe a 45-minute drive.

We parked at the train station, since it's not possible to drive in the old part of town.  We thought we'd catch a bus up to the top of the hill - where the old walled city is located.  Instead, we took a series of escalators up.  I think there were 9 of them, and some pretty steep, but it was a great way to get to the top without waiting for the next bus.  And it's free!

Our first stop was the weekly market, where everything from undies to kitchen utensils to fresh flowers and food, and even ready-to-eat foods are for sale.

One of the meat and cheese vendors at the Siena market

Fresh produce at the market

Flowers at the market

The market closes at 1:00, so we spent an hour or so perusing the hundreds of booths.  

I could post a picture of Rick, every single day, standing next to his favorite Italian vehicle, the Ape (ah-pay), a three-wheeled truck that we've seen everywhere.  He's sure we need one on Camano Island, and I think it would be fun too!

  Although Rick loves this little truck, John, a contractor, looks a little skeptical.  How many trips to the dump, during demolition, would this take? 

While we were shopping, we happened to see a Wind (cellphone company) store nearby, and we'd been wanting to buy a SIM card, to use in one of our unlocked phones,  so we would have a working phone for local calls.  We bought a card, and some minutes. The clerk told us it would all be loaded and working in about an hour.  We should have stayed to watch him load everything, but in our rush we didn't.  It seems the clerk may have pocketed most of our money, leaving us with about 5 minutes of call time, instead of the few hours we paid for.  Too bad, but I have to say, this is the only time we were taken advantage of on the whole trip.

After the market, we headed over to Il Campo, the main square in town.  It's a beautiful square surrounded by restaurants and shops.  Every year they host the famous Palio horse race there.  The town is divided into different Contrada, or neighborhoods, and 10 of the 17 are represented in the race each year.  It's a matter of great pride in town, and the different contrada have flags, unique street lamps and colors to represent their group.

What to do, what to do?

Why not just sit down and enjoy it like everyone else?

We had a great lunch, at Caffe Nannini, at the best table on the square.  I thought maybe you'd be tired of seeing another picture of us at a restaurant, so here's one of the view we had from the table.

Restaurant on Il Campo in Siena

The view from our table

After lunch we were off to see the Duomo.  It's very grand and beautiful.

Siena's Duomo, dating back to 1215

Inside, the church is chock-full of paintings, sculpture, stained glass and inlaid-marble floors.

Ceiling of the Piccolomini library

After seeing the Duomo, we headed back through town to the escalators that would take us back down to the parking garage near the train station.  The parking garage is also connected to the Pam grocery store and a mall of other shops.  We picked up a few things at Pam and went down to get the cars.  A local gentleman also checking out at the pay parking machine told us we should have gotten a token at the Pam store, and our parking would be free.  We were too tired to go back up to the store, but parking was only 1 euro and 60 cents for each car for the 4 or 5 hours we'd been here anyway.  What a deal!

Back at the house the guys built a fire in the living room fireplace.  We had hired a chef to come in and cook us a dinner.  This is one of the things RentVillas, the agency where we rented the house, recommends. It was a real treat.  Two ladies, sisters as it turned out, came about 6:30 and started preparing our dinner.  They work with a company called the Malgeri Group, which also offers cooking classes in the area.  The food was wonderful, and we didn't have to lift a finger.  They not only prepared and served everything, but did the dishes too.  The cost was 60 euros per person, which is pretty expensive, but we all enjoyed it thoroughly.

A fire in the fireplace, and Diana Krall on the Ipad, set the tone for our fancy dinner

OK, so maybe I'll try to limit our "at the table" photos to 1 per day.  This is our chef-prepared dinner at the house.

You can't see this very well in the picture, but Marco is all duded out in his sports jacket, making the other guys look like shmucks.  We've been trying to talk them all into wearing scarves, like the Italian men do. That would have helped at our special dinner.

Our second course of chicken breast, with a light gravy-like sauce and drizzled with a balsamic reduction.

Homemade tiramisu for dessert.

We had nice wine served throughout the meal.  One of our favorite antipastis was peccorino and gorgonzola cheeses served with fig jam or honey.  There were 4 or 5 other things served with this course too.  They also made a wonderful creamy risotto with white truffles and cucumbers.  There was also a pasta course.  Homemade tiramisu and then limoncello were served to finish the meal.

We were stuffed, and promised we'd try to fix some of this great meal at home.  Come si dice in Italiano? (How do you say in Italian) - I would like to have dinner at YOUR house?