Our first day in Florence involved us not staying in florence.

We had a tour today, that went to Sienna.

The tour left at around 9, and it took 1 hr to get there.

We got these electronic headset things, so the guide could talk to us all the time, which he did in 4 different languages, as we had Italian, French, Spanish and English speaking people. We trravelled by bus to Sienna first.

First we went to the cathedral of St Dominique, where we paid a brief visit, learning of the 17 provinces that make up Siena.

Trudy got told of by the cranky Italian cleaner, for showing her shoulders, as did about 5 other women in our group.

We left.

Siena is a really nice little town in the Tuscany region of Italy.

It is on 7 different hills, so everywhere is pretty steep. There is this old MASSIVE medieval fort where we stopped the bus, that has a park on the top apparently, we couldn't see it, but we could see the trees above the walls.

We walked through the little stone streets, steps everywhere, stopped at the convent of Saint Catherina, who was the first women in the world to practise medicine?? I think?

Her pad was pretty sick, all this decorative stuff on the altar...yeah.

After climbing a really steep hill, we reached this really Gothic cathedral, black and white striped walls (all stone) Really ornate statues, pointed archways above doors, really detailed.

Trudy bought a green scarf, to cover her shoulders, which was pretty funny, but she looked cute.

We went in and looked around, pretty amazing, lots of detail, very nice.

All the buildings in Siena are from the middle ages, except 3 (this is in old part of town) which is really cool, and also there are no cars, so it's peaceful.

The church was really stripey, and detailed, but the best part was the library, it was about 1000 years old, (the buildings were between 1000 and 1300.) and it had these big religious books, on display.

After church hunting, we walked to the town square, it's really quite big and also the lowest part in Siena, all the water from the 7 hills runs there, so there is also a fountain there that you can get water to drink from.

They run this event called The Palio on 2nd July and 16th august, 1 man from each province races a horse around the square 3 times, each province has there own flag, but only the previous two winners get theirs displayed around the town square, so there was a green one with a clover on it, and an orange one.

Siena has only one tower house left in the town square which is the clock tower, most of the tuscany towns did have these towers for seeing enemies, but Siena has only 1 unlike SG,....read on.

Ate lunch in shade, we looked at fountain and got some Siena fresh spring water....aaahhh! Tasty.haha We bought some souvenirs and the toilets cost 80 cents, so by then it was time to leave little Siena.

[We saw a girl with apple bottom jeans on, and the apples were showing out the bottom. Trudy was real impressed.]

On the way back to the bus, we were told about houses and buildings, the rich merchants and bankers lived in the un -middle age houses, tbecause they were so much bigger and nicer.

After Siena, we drove into the Chianti region and stopped in a little town where Trudy bought some big nectarines, and we saw a little church that looked like a castle.

We then drove to Saint Appiano, where there was an old bapistry, [ruins] but we went to a cellar and had some wine tasting.

They gave us 4 wines, which were all fantastic...apparently, I don't know how to appreciate wine one wine... one received 93/100 on scale of goodness, (or something) and silver medallion for brew or something. One thing I did appreciate was the cellar, it was all underground, because it was the perfect temperature, and it was really nice, all the oak barrels, and the big Italian ones, in like a little cave was cool.

We did meet a New Zealander guy who was traveling, and this nice Canadian girl who has been living in AUS for the past 10years.

San Gimignano (ask Trudy for pronunciation) was the last stop for the day. It's a little medieval town, that is famous for it's 14 standing towers. As I said before all towns used to have them, but they are now gone. SG used to have 71, but due to earthquakes mainly, it now only has the 14.

Being the way we are, we ditched the tour group and went to climb the bell tower. Cost 5 euros...awesome, and it had fantastic views of the village, and the other 3 or 4 villages surrounding it..Really nice. The climb was great too, lots of step, and the tiniest little opening to get through to the top.

Trud and I were actually thinking how many things we had climbed so far, Tower Bridge, Monument, Eiffel Tower...anyway, we stayed up there for a while and took photos, see the other towers and the suckers on the ground.

There was 3 big bells up there too.

Trudy found it scary climbing down the tower, scared of height a bit, it think.

So SG also has the best gelato shop in the world for the past 3 years, '07, '08, '09 and probably will win this year. It was too busy though, so we went next door.

I had Mora (blackberry) and raspberry, and Trudy had truffles and cocco (coconut). They were both pretty awesome especially since it was a million degrees.

We walked back to bus by 6, I had a sweat backpack on, then we came back to Firenze.

We had a supermarket bought...very interesting dinner.

hahahahaha

Watched top gear later...typical then GOODNIGHT

Pisa and Lucca tomoz. Yippee!!!