Getting Lost on the Road to Viareggion and seeing Firenza go by again and again and again

Well we left our hotel early this morning to visit Sienna Tuscany.  A large town built on a huge hill.  It was again dominated by a huge church, very ornate that too over a hundred years to build from the late 1200s to the late 1300s.  Again the striped motif of horizontal stripes, quite striking.  The old town was a maze of small alleyways and streets and back lanes and a huge square where twice a year they have a bareback horse races.  We ate lunch there in the square and no races for us.  It was just great to people watch.  The place was a lot like Santiago de Compostello, very old and interesting.

From here we went to the loveliest town yet, built with 14 towers still standing, San Gimignano, where it was sign of wealth and power to build a high tower.  It is quite impressive and very old, but most of the places have been fixed up inside and very trendy.  We stayed here until 5:30 pm.

From here it got interesting, the place we are staying was supposed to be an hours drive but we had to drive cross country to the Mediterranean, where we are now Viareggio about 90 km from Firenza (Florence).  We were told it was to take an hour, two hours later we were kind of lost and we sort of saw signs for Florence and Livorno over and over again.  It took so long we had to find a pit stop are everyone could no longer wait to get there.  2.5 hours later we finally got in.  On the way we had a sing song (almost everyone had something to drink before setting out).  We did the Canadian thing and sang Bus driver speed up a little bit (they have regulators here at 80 km), Four strong Winds and some Gordon Lightfoot songs along with a Louis Armstrong song.  Then 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, some French songs and on and on.  It was a hoot.

Then we got in all sweaty and messed up and had to sit down in a grand dining room to a four course supper (which was excellent).  To round out the evening we looked for the boardwalk to move around a bit before a late bedtime but did not find the beach boardwalk, it was very dark.  We did get plenty of exercise today with the hills we climbed up and down in the hill towns we visited.  There are not many fat people around in these hills.

Italy has been great.

Barb & Debbie