Today we visited Sienna and St Gimignano by car. We took the scenic route to Sienna (S 222) in our rented Peugot. Beautiful drive through olive groves, vineyards and unspoiled hills. The only signs of human civilization we saw were ancient farm houses and towers. Actually one other thing: there were car tires duct-taped to every sign post for many miles of the route. Apparently there was a race held along this road just recently. This particular road makes you want to race... it's windy, hilly, beautiful and well-paved.
We stopped a couple times along the way for pictures, the country is just that beautiful.
Pro-tip: Get to Sienna early because parking is difficult. We parked way the heck away from the old city center and spent a lot of time huffing our way to and from.
The duomo (big domed church) in Sienna is breath-taking in scope, detail and garishness. It's a zebra-striped abomination of architecture, but you have to respect it. Seven centuries of human sweat went into this building. Looking at the front, you get the feeling there was a team of architects all calling for "more sculptures!" through the centuries. Inside, it's equally stunning.
One thing I found interesting was the use of yellow, red, white and gray marble to make "drawings" out of stone. The look like large (well-done) comic book panels. One of my favorites was of a shield, banner and two keys done in red and yellow... the artist found bits of stone with gradients of red and yellow and arranged them to create the illusion of shadow in the banner. I'm describing a 1.5' x 1.5' area of one wall. The whole building is like this.
Then we waited in line for 40 minutes or so to get to walk up the giant bell tower. 570+ steps to the top for amazing views of Sienna and the surrounding country. Great workout. Very narrow stairs. The people who maintained the bells up there were not fat. FYI for fellow travelers: the toilet in this tower had no soap or tissue.
Next we drove to San Gimignano. Rick Steve's calls this city "pickled in a Medieval brine"; referring to the city's radical decline after the plague that halted its economic development and--presumably--construction. The population went from 14,000 to 4,000 in six-months according to the book we read.
So the entire city is left more or less as it was in 1348 when the plague struck. Narrow, brick streets; ancient brick buildings and fourteen tall, rectangular towers. We climbed the tallest of these: once for the view and once just for exercise/fun. Angela counted 12 floors.
We spent the next hour or so getting lost, hungry and then unlost. Dinner was good, but I was so hungry it's hard to evaluate.
Pro-tip: If you want to go to the especially good hole-in-wall place that Rick Steve recommends (and only seats 20), swing by early and make a reservation for later. It fills up.
We hunted around the city wall (in the dark) to find the car and on the second loop around, found actual found it.
Final adventure of the day was getting back to Florence in the dark. In Florence, they don't believe in making street signs you can read from a car. Instead, they are engraved in adorable little plaques set 10' up on the side of buildings. Non-reflective, no lights on them.
Phew.
For any traveler arriving here via Google, you may want to allocate different days to Sienna and St. Gimignano. We didn't get to see either of the museums in Sienna for lack of time and I wouldn't have minded leaving St. Gimignano a little earlier (it was 9 or 9:30 when we left).
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