Siena and Florence

After climbing the Duomo in Florence we took a 1.5 hour train ride to Siena in the heart of Tuscany. The city is where the color "burnt sienna" come from in the Crayola box! After hiking a bit to find the center of town we had some lunch on the famous Il Campo square- the largest in Europe and the site of Palio, a famous horse race - also featured in a recent James Bond movie. We then toured Sienna Duomo church and wandered the city a bit. It was nice to see something smaller and slightly different. We headed back to Florence around 4pm and then had a wonderful dinner.

Il Campo

Inside Siena Duomo

Our next day in Florence we wandered the city's central food market with cows face and all. Then we went to an old leather factory and school in one of the churches, Santa Croce. We got to see master craftsmen at work which was interesting.

After a quick lunch we headed to the Accademia to see Michelangelo's famous David. He was pretty impressive! Then after a quick rest to avoid the rain storm we headed back to tour the Uffizi, which has the greatest collection of Italian paintings in the world. We saw paintings like this and this and this. Then we had the world's best gelato at Gelateria Corrozze and walked to the other side of the river to the Michelangelo Plaza to get some great views over Florence. On the way back to the city we stopped at a wine bar and had some nice crostini and I had a nice local Rosso di Montalcino wine. We saw some Maundy Thursday Mass in the town square which was interesting. We were a little tired of pasta so we found an excellent kebab place - which was exactly what we needed!