Italy: Day 2

Photos:  Bambini chasing birds on the campo; Gumdrops?; After lunch in the Fortezza. 

Saturday morning we got up early and went wandering.  Frances is officially the best Sienese tour guide:  not only did she promise to fill me with a month's worth of gelato in four days (little did I know that the gelato stores close for the winter and this is the last weekend many of them will be open), she's taking an art history class so could fill me in on the important stuff, plus she's one of those people who just loves life, especially her life in Sienna.  

We walked and talked and gawked for hours through the tiny town; she told me all about the separate contradas (which are like little boroughs), casa torres (towers), the fortress the Medecci family built, etc.  I love Sienna - it has a small town feel, a much slower pace than London, laundry hanging from windows, and best of all, Italians.  London, I've discovered, is really only half British; the rest is tourist/visitors like myself, so I never really feel like I'm completely submerged in another culture.  In Italy, that was not the case, even though it has it's share of tourists, too.

Frances is not only a good tour guide, but a wonderful shopper.  We went into hat stores (and tried on every type of hat imagineable), olive wood stores, candy stores (loaded up on gum drops and chocolates), leather stores (tried in gloves), an antique store (where the ancient owner gave us antique lessons in Italian), scarf stores, vintage stores (where, after trying on tons of belts, Frances talked me into buying the coolest one ever), and, of course, gelato stores.  The best things about all these stores is they each had their own distinct smell, each one magnificent in it's own way.

In the afternoon, the sun came out and we basked out in the campo.  Little Italian bambini chased pigeons and lovebirds strolled about.  It was lovely, no other word.

That night, Frances took me to this family run restaraunt off the campo.  She ordered for us:  the house wine, which came w/ bread; the best tortellini of my life; a salad of fresh vegetables; and finally, chicken, which I enjoyed as I watched Frances try to debone her fish :)  I came the closest to tipsy I've ever been in my life.  It's true that the Italians definitely know how to eat.  

It was a perfect day.