Siena to Buonconvento

The Campo Siena

 

At last, I’ve heard someone say “Mumma Mia!” Not in a cartoon, or a musical, but just say it like…for real.

We are standing at the tourist office in Siena, and the very helpful man has made yet another phone call to try to find us somewhere to stay, but “Mumma Mia” there’s no room at the inn.

We walked into Siena deciding that we would lash out a bit, but if we were going to grace a place with our presence it had to come up to our full wishlist: can walk around the bed, good water pressure, really hot water, can turn around in the shower recess, wool blankets, soft pillows, in the centre of the old town, access to a computer.

We had briskly rejected the first room we were shown as we walked into town, a tiny stinking room with filthy carpet. Then there was no availability at all at the next two hotels we checked out so, puzzled, we headed to the Tourist Information Office.

Aha, it is Halloween tomorrow night and a big public holiday on Monday, All Saints Day. Like Thanksgiving, and Chinese New Year, this is the big one here, and all Italy is on the move. November 1 is the day everyone visits the family graves in the cemetery, so they all go home, or if not, they have a long weekend away.

Siena is packed, but not with tourists. It’s Italians wall to wall and the atmosphere is great. The problem is, all the hotels are full. After the helpful man has rung five with no luck, our wishlist has shrunk to, “Does it have a roof?”.

We are offered the last room in a place just a few steps outside the mediaeval town wall. We sigh, head there prepared to be stoical and undemanding and…step into a little charmer.  We’re thrilled, a hotel with so much character, pretty, individual,  and our room even has a mezzanine. We can’t believe our luck. It reminds us of one of our most favourite places in Spain, Costa Vella, a little family run hotel in Santiago de Compostella.

It has hot showers, wool blankets, oh, who cares about the rest of the list. We explore the place, there is a gravelled garden out the back, an ancient well with a pot of herbs and a terracotta cherub perched on top, a view out to the hills.  R says he’d like to stay forever.

Now here’s the thing about Siena. It is without a doubt one of the prettiest towns in the world, the mediaeval walled part, that is, which is an absolute masterpiece.

Like some other places we’ve seen, it has been preserved because of circumstances that would have been rather unfortunate at the time. The plague hit it and killed half the population, which stopped progress in its tracks, and then , no I won ‘t spoil it…

We walk up the flagged street and in through the huge gate with the big (guess whose) crest on it. Yep it’s those Medicis again.  Now this is puzzling because Siena and Florence were enemies, so why is there a Medici crest here? Because they won, that’s why, and annexed Siena, and whacked their crest all over it. Of course, you can understand it, if you were called, let’s say, Lorenzo the Magnificent, you’d think a few crests were de rigeur.  When it was taken over by Florence it was at first intentionally suppressed. Then the Medicis (during their 300 years of rule) got into their building, arts, sciences, painting, sculpture kick here, just as they did everywhere they were in control.  So it was more and more beautified during that time.

There are lovely buildings everywhere, but what makes you gasp and stare is the Campo, the huge shell-shaped piazza, with the palazzo and the tower, famous from every book on Italy. It’s the pearl, it’s one of the postcard memories I have of Italy from all those years ago. It is just stunning.

It’s getting dark, we sit at a restaurant with a clear view of the circle of graceful, elegant buildings and just drink it in. Finally we wander home, eating a gelato.

It buckets down with rain during the night. The next stage is 30 km, we can’t see how we can break it, and it is a daunting thought to contemplate walking in torrential rain for a very long hard day. So we make a snap decision to stay here for another day, let the weather have a chance to settle, and just enjoy Siena.

We do a few tourist things:

• Check out the museum, recognizing some of my new friends from The Lives of the Artists
• Climb the tower to look at the amazing view, after waiting in a queue for 45 minutes.
• Visit the cathedral with   a) an altar by Michelangelo    b) an altar painting by Bellini   c) a library of a local boy who became pope   d) a stained glass window by the stained glass guy Buoninsegna and 5 Sibyllas in tiles in the floors  e)coloured tiled pictures in the floors by Niccola Pisano  f)a façade by Niccolo’s son Giovanni
• Visit the crypt with frescoes only discovered in 2001

We think we now have had enough culture for one day, it’s still raining and we are hungry. So home, a bite of lunch, and the perfect way to spend a wet afternoon, a siesta.

When it’s Italian time to out to dinner we wander up the street, thronged with children in witches hats and masks and sit down to eat in a little trattoria in a back street. After scanning the menu we pass on the Warm Spleen Sauce, the Toasted Bread and Lard, the Sienese Tripe, even the Pieces of Stewed Wild Boar. We opt for spaghetti and soup. But R just can’t resist the Cooked Whipped Cream with Fruits of Wood for dessert.

Siena to Lucignano D'Arbia 1 November

If you're going to lay some paving, or a stone floor, and you want it to last, say about 800 years, you'd want to do it once and do it right. The Campo is in 9 sections and they've been having the famous horse races there for that long, as well as hordes of people tramping over it for centuries and it looks pretty damn intact. And a floor I saw today in a palazzo simply stopped me in my tracks, so to speak. Smooth, shiny, still perfect after all this time. La la la, I reckon Simon and Garfunkel could do something with that.

We trot around Siena all morning, filling up with culture despite the weather until, coming out of a museum into the Campo and seeing the rain coming down in sheets we decide that we have done everything in Siena that needs to be done and we retreat back into our warm dry hotel.

The Museo Civico had been a treat, though. There were two frescoes so different from anything we have seen. Both were painted in about 1330. One shows a horseman between a couple of castles, but what's special about it is that it is the first ever painting of a naturalistic landscape. I think it's worth about 5 out of 10 on the naturalistic scale but I guess he gets extra marks for thinking up the idea.

Then in the next room, on two walls facing each other, something else never done before. I wonder what the thought process for that is? You're lying in the bath watching your rubber duckie float around and suddenly you get a flash of inspiration..."How about I don't paint another Annunciation pic, sooo bored with them, how about I try something new, could I get away with it? What the hell ('scuse me) I'll do it."

It wasn't quite like that actually (rubber duckies hadn't been invented yet, baths either, really). There were 9 councillors in Siena (and because of that the Campo is set out in 9 sections) and they decided to break the mold. They asked for a pair of paintings  representing the effects of good government and the effects of bad government (to reflect what on them, I wonder...).

But the painting on good government shows, for the first time ever, a secular scene, with people dancing, buying shoes, farming, leading loaded donkeys, building houses. And (I loved this) it shows the exact spot on which our little hotel now stands, just outside the city gate and leading down the hill.

The city with the bad government has met a bad end, and with a lot of the fresco falling off the wall, serves it right, just a few creatures with horns and people in dire straits to make its point.

I think that's enough culture, don't you? Tomorrow we'll stir our lazy backsides and hit the road again, but (sigh) it really does look like this wet weather is setting in. R treats himself to a cigar and we stand in the garden looking at the lights.

Siena to Lucignana d'Arbia 2 November

"Too Pollyanna", says R, reading the instalment I had written yesterday during dinner, "All good news, nothing bad". So I say, "But all the interesting stuff is awful while it's happening, but I'll work in some tired feet or something." Now, I reckon a conversation like that is just asking for it, don't you?

The morning starts well, a bit overcast, but not raining, and as we walk out the sky clears and blue starts to spread all over, with little puffy picturebook clouds. We walked into Siena (who does that?) and we walk out again. Exit through the bookshop. Our hotel is on the Via Roma and just through the Porta Romana, so we reckon we are definitely on the right track. But the Via sign is right beside our hotel and it leads us away from the busy road and straight into countryside. All those rolling hills, dotted with farmhouses and hardly any traffic. It gets quieter and quieter. (In the distance there is a freeway cutting across the landscape and R takes a photo, just to remind us that it's not all picture perfect all the time.) Actually the Frenchman Alain was fascinated by the factories. I always tip my hat down to avoid looking at them when we have to pass one, but, "I am a man from manufacturing", he says and loves to look at them.

He did pose a very interesting question, though. Why are the Medici towers square? It is cheaper to make a round tower of the same height and strength, so why did they choose to make them square. Flaunting their wealth and power, or some other reason? Note to self, ask Andreas, he'll be sure to know.

We walk and walk, it's going to be a long day, even though we have found a place to stay to break the stage. There is a bit of confusion with some of the waymarkers. Actually, it's pretty funny, apparently there is quite a bit of politics and feeling between the two main Italian Via groups, and one of the results is that there are either two waymarkers or none. Like, if yours is up, we have to make our mark too. It's not very saintly! But I guess the history is there, Siena and Florence were at each others' throats for centuries, while at the same time spending a fortune on churches and religious art. The Guelphs and the Ghibellines, Siena backed one, Florence backed the other, the Pope was involved too and they spent hundreds of years, fighting, besieging, plundering. I can't remember which one backed which, and, strangely, those names sound more Dutch than Italian to me. But I digress...

We sit beside the road in the sun, the ground is wet and everything is steaming in the sunshine and have our first little picnic of the day. The countryside is lovely, golden autumn trees everywhere. It looks rather like lots of the folds in the hills around Bathurst in Autumn.  

But somehow we miss a turn, and we don't realise it for a long time, although we are looking at the map and at the gps quizzically from time to time like a pig looking at an armchair. It is becoming clear that all is not well, but the road is a nice quiet backcountry road, hardly any traffic, rising and falling enough to be interesting and very pretty all around. We are sort of heading in the right direction, so we assume that we will meet up with the route sooner or later as it emerges from a track. But we gradually get more and more pessimistic, and the sky is getting darker all the time, with definite signs of rain in the distance and occasional warning shots onto us.

When we reach Radi we have to accept that we have stuffed up. We are several km away from where we want to be, it doesn't sound like much but after walking 20km or so already it is, "Oh darn it" or words to that effect. We are lost, not lost like someone will find our bleached bones one day, but lost like, how to find our way back to where we want to go without walking half the night. So we stop for another little picnic and then change direction, onto a busier road, deciding to see if we can hitch a ride. The first couple of cars whizz by, and R says ,"We might as well accept that we will have to walk it." Around a corner, another car approaches, it's far too dangerous to stop there, no-one would, but, after all, this is Italy, who knows. I stick my thumb up, the car screeches to a halt, perched in the middle of the road, in the middle of a tight corner. We bundle in, the driver is a Professor of Medicine at the University in Siena, he is going near where we want to go.

Up the little hill and into our hotel.

Lucignano d’Arbia to Buonconvento 3 November

It rains a little bit on and off all night, the day dawns bright and blue sky, but the damage is already done.

We set off, perfect weather, hot even, and lovely scenery. The road leads out of pretty little Lucignano d’Arbia and after a brief tricky passage on the wrong side of the Armco, suspended on the steep side of a field, but out of reach of the trucks thundering by in both directions, we find our way down a little path and into the quiet of the countryside.

The track might be fine in summer, baked hard, but with last night’s rain it is slick and slippery. On one side a ploughed field, on the other a railway line. We skate and slide, then as the track gets lower and the grey clay gets wetter, we struggle along, our boots gathering mud until they are covered with a thick clog of mud.

I look at the field, and try it. No, that’s a mistake, I sink even deeper into that soft wet earth, back to the path which stretches out far ahead. “It’s going to be a long 2 kilometres,” says R.

Maybe we will be stranded like a hippopotamus in an African drought, up to our knees in mud and not able to take a step. I’m laughing to myself, thinking of a helicopter sent to rescue us, lifting us up. Our boots pull out of the mud with a sucking sound. The pilot says, “No way, they’re not getting into my helicopter with those boots.”  So we hang on the cables until we are deposited in a carwash and we get the pressure hoses onto it.

I look thoughtfully at the railway line. It looks rusty and disused but I don’t dare try it. For a while I amuse myself imagining walking along the tracks, a train comes suddenly, I don’t have time to get off, I’m knocked over, my feet are cut off, at least I’m free of these boots, but I bleed to death there. It’s very entertaining.  Suddenly a train comes flying past as I watch, startled.

After dragging myself along for an eternity, the track rises a little, there’s a shard of rock and a tuft of grass to step on, then it dries out enough to make it possible to walk, or trudge rather, dragging the weight of my boots along.

After about an hour the track rises, there’s gravel, a little bridge over the railway line. I find the perfect boot scraper, one of life’s little pleasures, a bit of broken pot with a long side and a pointy end. I haven’t seen R for a while and I watch him come into sight.

When he reaches the rise, he says, “Wow, that was tough. I ended up walking on the railway line. It was going well until the train came along.” I check him for missing feet and blood. Neither, all seems in order.

We stop for a little snack and then walk on to the next village. There are sheep all through these parts (that’s rural speak, did you like it?). They are picturesque of course, but the interesting thing is that the flocks all seem to be in the sole care of sheepdogs. They are large white dogs who blend in perfectly and suddenly detach themselves to bark at us enthusiastically as we go by.

Now we have noticed something all along the way in Italy. No-one disciplines their dogs. They bark, no-one takes any notice. They hurl themselves at the fence, there’s never a shout of, “Settle down”. And yesterday one that was not on a chain or behind a fence actually went for us, fangs flashing, with its owner watching impassively, showing mild amusement. R beat it back with his trekking pole and it retreated. They do seem to understand a stick. After joking with each other about catapults we have actually seen them for sale once or twice, so tempting.

Now, another mystery. When does all the building get done?  Everywhere there is scaffolding, and signs of activity, but the only time you see any actual work on these sites is early in the morning, when occasionally you can spot someone throwing a rope up. Then…nothing. Of course, you have to have siesta, mate. And after that it’s hardly worth starting, it’ll get dark too soon. Or it’s Saturday afternoon, or Sunday, or it’s wet, or hot, or… In a country full of fabulous and magnificent buildings, how on earth did they get built?

We arrive in Buonconvento early in the afternoon, take a stroll, looking at the so familiar town walls and gates with the Medici style. Buonconvento had the dual good luck in times gone by to be at the confluence of two rivers and on the route of the Via, so it prospered, but this also made it vulnerable to attack, hence the walls, which still seem to contain most of the town. It’s easy to imagine it in times gone by.

I’m immensely diverted by the fact that the hotel tonight is the Hotel Ghibellino. So easily amused. I check with the receptionist. Were the Ghibellines with Siena or Florence? She is visibly shocked…Siena, Signora