Siena 21

The Last - This and That

Here is one last post on Siena.

A church porch



Hotel Atrium. This used to be an open courtyard, when the building was a private Palazzo. 



Now a great glass ceiling makes a gathering room below. The boxy thing on the right is the elevator.



The view from our room



Siena is famous for its Palio, the twice yearly summer horse races 🏇 by the various neighborhoods, each in its traditional colors and patterns. The horses are assigned. The race is held in the town square with slopes, wicked corners, and massive crowds 
The jockeying is brutal. Bareback, mind you. It doesn’t matter if the jockey comes off; the horses can win riderless.



And the shops will sell you a souvenir. 



Or food, fresh and colorful 

Italian pottery is everywhere. All hand painted. Much of it is made in Daruta. 




This plate shows the neighborhood symbols and colors used in the horse races. The black and white at the top is Siena’s coat of arms.



I wanted to take home this Green Man, but I only had a carry-on-size bag, quite full, so he stayed. 



This marvelous sculpture was on a fountain at the entrance of Tortoise Street (in Italian, of course).



We wondered what these rings were for. They were too high to be for tying horses. They were for torches, to light the streets. 



This beautiful wood carving was one of a pair on a door, almost identical, but not quite. The craftsman had either gotten better on the second one, or had gotten tired on the second one, because one was very slightly better made than the other. 



The door knocker on the Egyptian museum



A restaurant, one of innumerable vaulted spaces in the bowels of the brick buildings, probably once storage cellars or pig styies. 

Food was not entirely pleasing on this trip.  I tried not-standard things and got some surprises. 

This appetizer was bacon fat on dried out bread. It tasted good, but I would have fixed it differently. 

The main course was …. Umm…. this rawness over a bed of greens underneath. 

Notice Somebody stayed with true and trusted selections. 

This was a most appealing little shop for writers.


This equine was made from heated plastic bottles pressed in a horse form.


We tried a “cookie.” Like most Italian food, it was heavy. Tasty, but very solid and dense. 


We did eventually go to a place with very fine food that I liked - after a place whose grilled t-bone veal cutlet was still mooing it was so undercooked.

But this place had exquisite molecular cuisine, of which this was the appetizer. Each thing had a delicate and delectable flavor. 


I wanted a pizza while we there, but it was too pure for my taste: bland, no salt, no herbs, only exactly what was written on the menu. I like my own better. 

But the trip was overall good, the sights worth seeing, and experiences gained. 



Then homeward bound on the train, back to winter.