{"id":4316,"date":"2003-10-14T06:54:09","date_gmt":"2003-10-14T13:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/?p=4316"},"modified":"2018-02-28T12:03:07","modified_gmt":"2018-02-28T20:03:07","slug":"san-gimignano-monteriggioni-and-siena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/2003\/10\/14\/san-gimignano-monteriggioni-and-siena\/","title":{"rendered":"San Gimignano, Monteriggioni and Siena"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We woke up very early and had a shower and breakfast. Aviva’s legs and my back are still sore – just too much walking on stone surfaces for our old bodies I suppose.<\/p>\n

The weather for our trip has been superb, as its been in the 70s and sunny every day. Diet Coke is called Coke Light in Europe, and I think its a little sweeter here than in the U.S.<\/p>\n

We drove out to San Gimignano, one of the small hill towns north of Siena.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Aviva<\/a>

Aviva in front of the entrance to San Gimignano that we used<\/p><\/div>\n

San Gimignano is known best for its towers – it once had over 70 but now has 14 left standing.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Four<\/a>

Four of the remaining towers<\/p><\/div>\n

The <\/a>Collegiata was wonderful (its not a Duomo because there’s no bishop there anymore). The entire inside is fresco. One particular wall is interesting as it depicts hell.<\/p>\n

\n

\"The<\/a>

The facade of the Collegiata<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Tortures of Hell from a fresco inside the Collegiata<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

\n

\"The<\/a>

The ticket for the Collegiata (back)<\/p><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

We also visited the <\/a>museums in San Gimignano – one is famous for its frescoes which depict the marriage of two people in a very secular fashion.<\/p>\n

\n

\"A<\/a>

A fresco of the newly-married couple sharing a bath<\/p><\/div>\n

\"One<\/a>

One ticket gets you into most of the museums in San Gimigano<\/p><\/div>\n

We then walked back to our car (after a gellato). I took a picture of San Gimignano as we left.<\/p>\n

\n

\"San<\/a>

San Gimignano from a distance<\/p><\/div>\n

We drove out of San Gimignano and through Colle di Val d’Elsa<\/a>. We only stopped long enough to take a picture because it was after 4P and we wanted to make sure to reach Siena before dark (we’ve had enough issues with driving…).<\/p>\n

\n

\"The<\/a>

The corner wall of Colle di Val d'Elsa<\/p><\/div>\n

Then, we drove to Monteriggioni<\/a>, the hill town with the best-preserved walls in Tuscany. It was a northern defensive outpost for Siena during its wars with Florence.<\/p>\n

\n

\"The<\/a>

The walls as we climbed up to Monteriggioni<\/p><\/div>\n

\"One<\/a>

One of the towers of Monteriggioni<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>

The church in Monteriggioni<\/p><\/div>\n

We got back to Siena without incident (perhaps the first time we’ve been able to do that). We’re now repacking in preparation for the drive to Bologna and my departure in a couple of days. My back is slightly better now, and Aviva’s feet don’t hurt as badly.<\/p>\n

We ate dinner in the hotel at their newly remodelled restaraunt, Il Capriccio. Its named after a set of images by Da Vinci that the owner of the hotel actually owns – one of the images is on the business card (the original by Da Vinci wasn’t colored). The food was quite good.<\/p>\n

\n

\"The<\/a>

The business card for the hotel's restaraunt<\/p><\/div>\n

We slept soundly after rearranging our books and souvenirs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\nTranslate<\/span><\/a>\"\"\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We woke up very early and had a shower and breakfast. Aviva’s legs and my back are still sore – just too much walking on stone surfaces for our old bodies I suppose. The weather for our trip has been superb, as its been in the 70s and sunny every day. Diet Coke is called […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[790,815,816],"class_list":["post-4316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-italy-2003","tag-monteriggioni","tag-san-gimignano"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2w3Qj-17C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4316"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179280,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316\/revisions\/179280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}