I had been so looking forward to today and everything seemed to be going so well. Now I am here in Siena and it sucks.
It’s about 10pm and I already think I hate the place. Maybe even more than I dislike rude Germans.
The day started well - we were up with plenty of time after packing our bags the night before and checked out of Hotel Annabella about 9.30am. The lovely owner, who we fell in love with and made us feel so welcome who I nicknamed Guiseppe, said we could leave our luggage there until we left for Siena.
Doing so, we found an internet café down the road and sussed out the location of our hotel in relation to the bus stop we would alight at in Siena. Turns out, according to Google Maps, that it was about a 200m walk and very easy to find. Just one turn and walk down the road. Haha, yeah right.
We boarded our bus without any trouble. It had started to storm while we were online and we hoped it would be clearer in Siena.
No changes or connections this time around, although we did pass through the serial killer town again.
We arrived in Siena after about an hour and a half not really knowing what to expect but confident that it didn’t matter. We had booked a super nice hotel according to the booking agency (mainly cos that’s all that was available) and if it was raining we would enjoy the view and our room and catch up on some blogging.
Well, finding the hotel was to be the first of our challenges. It seems Google Maps had taken a rather liberal view of down one corner and walk straight. We did that - in several different directions - and only ended up at more turns and more streets.
So we walked one way, then another and if you can imagine a single point on a map we walked away from it four times at 90-degree angles and were still lost.
We walked across the road to a park and there, having sworn and snapped and generally hated and blamed each other for our predicament, Sam set off to look for the hotel while I sat with the luggage under a tree and tried to stay dry. Did I mention it was raining again?
Within five minutes Sam was back and a shrug of the shoulders told me he still had no idea.
It was my turn to set out and I also returned within a few minutes, our Googling having deceived us completely.
Finally, Sam went and asked someone in a corner café who pointed him in the complete opposite direction with two left turns - not on Google at all.
Sceptical and cranky, I stayed with the bags, now waterproofed with their little covers while I sat in the rain.
Five minutes, 10 minutes, I was convinced he was lost.
Finally, from another direction to the one he had left in, he returned and cracked a smile. He had found it, and not where Google or the guy had said. It wasn’t too far, maybe 300m but it was still raining quite heavily.
We set off, me following while Sam led us to what should have been our beautiful hotel.
Now, maybe if I hadn’t stacked it on a major road, landing on my arse and back, I would have been in a better mood when I discovered our hotel was a dump, but I did and there you go. For days Sam and I have been joking about my shoes and the chances of me slipping over in my thongs which are very slippery on wet surfaces. Just on the bus on the way here, we had joked that if I did Sam wouldn’t be helping me up but getting out the video camera to film it while I lay there like a turtle caught on its shell - so back heavy would I be with my pack on.
And, fortunately for Sam‘s manhood, he did no such thing when the time came.
All I know is we were within metres of the hotel entrance and on a slight decline, I stepped on a smooth paver and my foot went out from underneath me. In fact, my thong did. I ripped the toe plug straight out of the thong and hit the pavement with my bum. I did manage to hold on to my fake Prada handbag and luckily Sam had just taken the laptop off me.
So down I went. People across the street laughed, though I didn’t see them, I heard them. Sam told me later he gave them the bird and they stopped. A woman and her son who had just been walking past me at the time stopped to help me. I think it was more embarrassing that I couldn’t get up with the weight of my pack behind me than anything else. Sam had to literally pull me upright.
So, red-faced and wet and already in a bad mood, we checked in.
The hotel was found on Last Minute Accommodation and I would not recommend them to anyone. It is supposed to be two star and, OK, that’s not great but this place would be lucky to be classified as a youth hostel.
It’s a former monastery so I would expect it to have some character etc but this is not character. It’s damp and mouldy and cracked ceilings and windows that don’t close, stained green carpet, a broken shower door, cold showers and formica furnishings, no safe as promised in the description and the wifi doesn’t work.
It is the worst place we have stayed in. It was supposed to be one of the best.
Learning all this after my dramatic stack in front of a crowd and I was in tears.
Sam went downstairs and told the reception girl it was not what we had been expecting and were less than impressed. She has promised we can look at some other rooms tomorrow as they are all different.
I can’t even describe the layout. It’s a veritable maze of walls and doors and rooms and levels. There are floors and then levels on each floor with mirrors on the walls that just make it more confusing so that you are stepping down to step up - if that makes sense.
So I had a quick shower in the broken shower with the cracked and water damaged ceiling and lay down on the bed and sulked.
I wasn’t upset with Sam, just the hotel, the booking agency, my thongs and thus Billabong.
Meanwhile, our neighbour in the room down the stairs but on the same floor and next door, was a violinist. When we first checked in, they were playing some sweet, melancholy tunes, it was very pleasant actually. An hour later, it was scales, over and over.
Two hours later, and still the scales.
We went out - if for nothing else we needed to eat.
We wandered towards where we thought the town centre was, up hills and down hills. Siena is a very hilly place.
And quite by chance we came across the Piazza del Campo, the site of the famous Palio and were we hoped to spend six hours or more in the sun on Monday to watch a 75-second bareback horse race.
The track, such that it was, had been covered with clay to give the horses some traction on the cobble-stoned square. The terrace and balcony seating was already set up or in the process of being so. We tried to work out what would be our best vantage point on race day but decided there probably was none. At my height I would be lucky to see the horses’ hoofs. Unfortunately, terrace or balcony seating was not a option at 300 euro a pop. Standing in the middle of the square for the race was free but as they had to close entry to it early on for parades and such, it means people who choose this option have to stand in the sun (or rain) for up to five hours before the actual race gets under way with no toilet facilities etc. Sounds like fun yeah?
Deciding not to venture out onto the track today given the rain had turned the clay to mud, we continued our exploration of the town centre.
It really is a charming place, all narrow cobblestone streets, brightly decorated with the colours of the provinces competing in Monday’s race. It was all very festive.
Before long, I spotted the now familiar marks of a Tuscan duomo, green and white striped marble. We came out into the Piazza del Duomo where Siena’s cathedral dominates.
It was begun in the 12th century and is one of the great examples of Italian Romanesque architecture.
Its main façade was completed in 1380.
It was magnificent. Florence’s duomo is enormous and grand, but this was beautiful. Much more gothic influences at work here on the exterior, at least. There were hundreds of people about and we presumed this was typical sightseeing at work, much as Florence’s duomo is always crowded.
After a few snaps we decided to look inside as it seemed people were just coming and going as they pleased.
Up the marble stairs and a sign at the entrance said entry was free from August 14 to 17, the days we were here - obviously for Palio.
We went in and were suddenly overwhelmed by the swelling sound of thunderous drumming.
Some sort of Palio proceedings were taking place with drummers, flag bearers and little kids dressed in all the different colours of the provinces competing in the great race present. Hundreds of people looked on as the official blessing of the event took place. I can only guess this by the way because it was all in Italian.
Sam and I were thrilled to have stumbled across something like this and started snapping away like everyone else even though signs everywhere said no photography. Television crews were capturing the action and it was standing room only at the front, which of course means I could see diddly squat.
After about 10 minutes, the drummers and flag bearers began to parade toward the cathedral doors and out into the piazza so I raced ahead to be there on the way out - like a good journalist does.
There they were in their magnificent colours and I got some great pics I will have to post. Unfortunately the bloody tv crews kept getting in the way (typical) and some amazing shots I got of one “province” were ruined by the enormous bum of a camera man that I’m not sure can be cropped out.
It had also stopped raining. So, on that little high, having captured something so amazing and feeling all the energy in the town, we set off to find some dinner. It was about 6.30pm.
Pizza. That’s what they eat in Siena. If anyone asks, pizza. And do you know what, the last thing I felt like was pizza. I felt like I had had it everyday since we arrived in Italy and I just wanted normal food. Or real pizza, from Dominos. I know weird, but I like Dominos Pizza better. The Italians use way too much mozzarella.
So, we didn’t want pizza and we walked and walked and walked and the only restaurants we found that served something other than pizza, were empty and that was never a good sign.
Cranky now because I was over-hungry I gave up and went back to the room while Sam went to look for something other than pizza.
Within 10 minutes he was back, with kebabs. Still, it wasn’t pizza. In the meantime I had worked out the wifi didn’t work so we will have to post this when we get to an internet café.
And to toast our shoddy hotel and our kebabs, Sam, opened the bottle of Belgian beer he has been carting around for the past two and a bit weeks. He was going to post it home but after we read about how dodgy the Italian postal service is, we decided against it.
Beer and pizza and then we decided, just to really feel like home, we’d watch some tv. Nope, that’s broken too.
Alysia (August 14)
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