Day 44 - Tuscany!!

Today was our "Best of Tuscany" tour that as you can probably guess took us all around Tuscany!!

Our adventures started once we got to Siena which was about an hour and fifteen minute ride from Florence. I had no idea that Florence and Siena have some bitter history between them but apparently they do which I thought was interesting. We had a guided tour of the city which is broken up into 17 contrades each with their own flags, churches, and meeting places. Apparently these contrades are a big deal in the town because they make up their own communities and living within one binds you to certain customs and identity. These contrades become very competitive during the early Palio which is a midevil horse race around the famous Piazza de Campo...I found this very interesting so I'm going to tell you about it!! So there are 17 horses and a lottery decides which contrade has which horse...it is up to the luck of the draw as to which horse a contrade has. In preparation for the Palio there are great parades and celebrating beacuse it is a religious celebration of the Virgin Mary after all (still trying to figure out how the two connect but whatever) and the day of the Palio each contrade brings their horse into their churches and blesses the horse good luck...if it poops in the church, this is supposed to be a good luck sign hmmm. Anyways moving on, on the day of the event the whole town crowds into the Piazza de Campo to watch the 90 second bareback horse race around the campo...whichever contrade wins goes nuts after they win and they get a banner and bragging rights for that year until the next year roles around. Interesting right??

Piazza de Campo

Banner hanging in the winner's contrade from the Palio

View of Siena

Also while we were in Siena we got to go inside the Siena Cathedral which has beautiful marble scenes on the floor and is covered in black and white marble because those are Siena's colors.

See the black and white...cool huh?!

After Siena we traveled to a vineyard for lunch! On our tour of the vineyard we got to see the famous Tuscan white haired cows (they're massive!!), the vineyard, olive trees and where they store their wine. Afterwards they fed us lunch which was DELICIOUS!! We ate bruschetta with their extra virgin olive oil and white wine, next was pasta with ragu sauce and their red wine, afterwards was salad with cheese and some meats and finally we got biscotti with desert wine. Full meal right?! The views from the vineyard were unbelievable...this was the Tuscany I expected to see but better!!

TUSCANY!!!

White cow

Wine & olive oil

Next we headed up to a small midevil town on a hill called San Gimignano. We found the "World's Champion" gelato and had some of that there...I've had better, I'm just saying! Next we climbed up to see some more awesome views and bask in the Tucsan afternoon...Mary and I found a great place (another hangout spot) and just wanted to sit there but we had to meet back up with our tour because we were leaving for a countryside drive of the Chianti. We got to see fields of sunflowers and even pass the town of Volterra (where Twilight New Moon was shot!) as we headed towards Pisa.

Grad pic : )

Could have stayed here all day...view from San Gimignano

sunflowers : )

Ending in Pisa we got to spend some time taking really cheesy pictures with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, of course. Also I learned that the reason it's leaning is because it was built on silt and mushy soil at the time and originally when it was built only 3 stories were built, then as a time of war approached it was abanoned and finally 100 years later the top 5 stories were compelted. Apparently had they built it all at once it would have collapsed!

We made our way back to Florence and had such a great day! I recommend taking this tour for sure, it was great! Tomorrow Mary and I are off with the same tour company to Cinque Terre, hopefully it's as great!