Adventures Under The Stars

This morning my aunt posted that it was St. Catherine of Siena day.  This had me reflecting on the time I spent in the Tuscan medieval hillside town where she was born.  I have to say, getting into the town was an event in itself.  The year was 2018 and I was backpacking on my first trip through Italy… Europe for that matter. I remember leaving Rome at sunrise on the public bus.  Yes, I am one of those people who takes local transportation when I am traveling. I always feel like it adds authenticity to a trip. It is normally a fairly easy and fun experience. In this case, the bus ride and everything that went with it turned out to be one of the hardest parts of the trip to figure out.  I thought I had planned out every detail and researched everything, but to know that a bus had the ending location (Milan) and not the next location (Siena) on the top of it in flashing lights was lost in translation.  If I had a video of me and the man that tried so hard to explain to me in Italian how buses worked, I would post it for a daily laugh.  It didn’t make it better that everything was written in Italian and my Italian consisted of “thank you”, “please”, “bathroom”, “police”, and “wine”. “Vino de la casa rosso por favor” was my go-to phrase to be exact. But I digress, so as the man explained it for the third time (maybe the tenth) it finally hit me that I better just get on the bus that he was pointing. I warily asked the bus driver “Siena” and he nodded yes.  I honestly didn’t know where I was going to end up but hey, I was there for an adventure.  After we got to the Siena bus station (did I mention my husband was there and he wanted to fire me as his free tour guide), we had to figure out how to pick up the rental car and park outside of Siena.  What I failed to realize was you had to catch a bus into a hill town… with exact euro change (insert my manic laugh here).  So, after a morning of public bus travel, speaking in broken Italian, wanting to throw my google translator out of a window, trials, tribulations, and pure luck I arrived in Siena.  I will say it is a charming town, so full of history with the  Siena Cathedral, Piazza del Campo, and home to the Palio (horse race).  Just being there was incredible knowing how many times I had seen that spot in a movie or in a picture.  I think that is one of the big reasons I love to travel… to see, feel, taste, touch, and smell a place for myself.  To take your dreams and turn them into a reality is truly a self satisfying experience. 

Would I go through it all again just to spend part of a day in Siena?  Yes-I loved every experience that day gave me and I would not trade those memories (good and bad) for anything. If I ever have the opportunity to go back, I will not go there on my own especially if I only had a short time to spend there.  I just feel like it would be so much work for so little time.  However, I would absolutely recommend it as part of a day stop on a tour where you are letting someone else take care of all those little details!

Some of my personal photos from the day.