Mer officially “handed off the baton” last night, so I am in charge of the rest of the vacation. We started off this morning by checking out of the hostel and walking to the train station, just in time to miss the train to Florence pulling out of the station. The next train was around 11:30, so we suddenly had two hours to explore more of Ravenna.
We stowed the baggage in a storage place and headed off toward the church of San Francesco. I wanted to see the church again (it is a beautiful and simple Franciscan church), but along the way I had noticed the remains of a ruined palace that was free to the public. We swung in there, and in addition to the ruined walls that were still standing were about twenty partial stone mosaics that had decorated the palace. These were not so fine as the glass and gold mosaics we had seen yesterday, but they were still very pretty.
After the palace, we did stop in at the church of San Francesco. We looked in all of the small side chapels and looked at the length of the church from the back. At that point, I decided we should head back to the train station, which we did, where we caught the train to Bologna and then on to Florence.
The train to Bologna was a normal Italian train, but the train to Florence was a very spiffy express train. We shared our four seats with two American girls from Arizona who were over in Europe as a celebration of the older girl graduating college (she was on a five-week tour, while her friend was over here for two weeks). They were interesting people, and seemed genuinely amazed when Mer told them we were over here for our fifteenth wedding anniversary (they thought we were younger – happy, that!).
We were originally going to head right on to Siena, where our hotel was, but I could not skip Florence. Mer spent a semester of college living in Florence, and I had liked the city when we visited about eighteen years ago. So I decided we should spend a couple of hours in the city. We stashed the bags in storage, and headed in to the Duomo, with its famous dome.
The Duomo area was a madhouse of tourists, but we did get in line to get inside the church. We had to wait about five minutes to get in, but once in, I was amazed at how clean the church was, visually. The walls held few decorations, and there were very few tombs or statues about. It was harmonious and beautiful. We spent about ten or fifteen minutes looking around, mostly up at the ceiling and dome.
We then popped over to a restaurant to grab a sandwich. We ate inside because we had the small dining room to ourselves, and it was a peaceful break from the crazy streets outside. Thus energized, we tackled the big tourist sight of the day – the church bell tower.
The bell tower is right next to the church, and happily, Mer had never done the tower before – she had only climbed the Duomo stairs, which costs more and usually has a line. I rarely get to introduce Mer to new things, so I was pleased by that. The downside to the experience for Mer was that it required her to climb 414 narrow steps. The downside for me meant that the top was quite high up, and I am scared of heights.
The bell tower stairs have four huge landings for people to rest, with views from all four. The first and third levels were well protected, and I felt more or less okay. The second level had a huge hole in the floor, and although it was barricaded off, it did not make me feel very good. The last level led to the outside, with a narrow passage around the top of the tower. It is enclosed in a wire cage, but I could not handle it, and I stayed inside the bell tower while Mer checked it out. I liked the stairs, though.
We headed back to the train station to catch the 5:10 train to Siena. We will be in Siena for two nights, which will give us a chance to get a bit of rest while still seeing sights. Siena is built on several hills, but happily, there was a series of escalators and people-movers that took us from the at-the-bottom-of-the-hill train station up to the city. The walk to our hotel in the old city center was longer than I expected, but we found the hotel all right. I was surprised that the city center was mostly pedestrian – there were still a handful of cars and a few mopeds; it was a bit irritating to have to move out of the way of a single car crawling its way though the foot traffic.
We headed out for supper once we had checked in. The clerk at the desk recommended a restaurant nearby, so we tried that. Siena has a pasta, pici, that is a regional specialty, so we got that with a simple, slightly spicy tomato sauce. It was excellent, and it was like a very thick spaghetti noodle.
After supper, we headed down to the main square, il Campo; it is best known for the somewhat insane horse race held in the square twice a year. The square is really small, and how they race horses around it is a bit of a mystery to me. The city is divided into seventeen neighborhoods, and each neighborhood is very loyal to its horse in the race. The race draws over sixty thousand spectators.
Il Campo was much quieter for us. There were a few hundred people about in the square and surrounding restaurants. The evening was cool and perfect, so we got gelato and sat down on the ground. Once we had finished eating, we followed the lead of some of the locals, and we lay down on the bricks. The whole square is sloped toward the huge and impressive town hall, so you still are looking at the building even when reclining. We spent over half an hour like that, and it was very relaxing.
After a day of heights, we should have more in store for tomorrow – Siena has towers to climb as well, and adds the bonus of being built on hills.