Wednesday was by far my favorite day in Italy. We signed up for a bus tour of Tuscany. Typically, I like to do things on my own and skip the tours, but this one was pretty great. Here's the website:
http://www.walkaboutpass.com/nqcontent.cfm?a_name=offer_best_tuscany_tour
Our first stop was Siena. Siena is known for it's banking industry, it's beautiful and exotic looking (for that time) cathedral...
...and the "Palio di Siena", which is a medieval-syle horse race that takes place twice a year. In the horse race, 10 horses race, each representing one of the 17 districts. Below is a picure of one of the districts "symbol":
I love this picture with the city behind the symbol in the fence
The race takes place in the Piazza del Campo. It's so neat to think that the piazza below transfers into a track suitable for a horse race. Oh, and our tour guide told us it was a ruthless event...jockeys knocking each other off their horses...haha, LOVE it!
(ignore the crazy tourist girl who got in the middle of Mark's perfect shot)
After we left Siena, we headed to lunch at a small organic farm with an amazing view of San Gimignano. We had 4 different types of wine with lunch (all made on site) and their delicious olive oil. Here is the farm's website (http://www.fattoriapoggioalloro.com/eng/index.htm) They also have a bed and breakfast on site. And look at this view:
From lunch, we headed to San Gimignano. Mark and I spent most of our San Gimignano time in a leather store (he got a briefcase and I got a purse). But, we did manage to make some time for San Gimignano's famous gelato. The place was voted "World's Best" a few times and serves rare flavors like "Saffron" and "White Wine"...both of which were not bad; though I preferred Chocolate.
Last, we headed to Pisa, where Mark and I spent our time on a very cheesy photo shoot:
By the time we got back that night, we were exhausted and kept it low key so we could make our train to Venice in the morning.
I'm loving this blog updating maniac, keep it up!! :)
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