Exploring Sienna

After a great night's sleep and a strong, hot shower at the Altarocca Wine Resort, we got up early, checked out and made our way to Sienna, but not without snapping a few last pictures of the view at Altarocca.  Not too shabby!

We started the day in the town of Assisi, which was another quaint Italian town, as well as a UNESCO site (we love them!).  If you're Catholic, I'm sure you've heard of Saint Francis of Assisi and this is  his birthplace.  There is a Basilica there, which is the center of the town.  Besides that, there really isn't much to see, but the Basilica is worth checking out. 

Assisi, like Orvieto is located on the top of a hill and has a great view.  

After taking in so many of the views, we tore ourselves away from the overlooks and decided to check out the Basilica.

Unfortunately, you can't take pictures inside the chapel, but I'll just tell you, it wasn't terrible.  ;)

After Assisi, we arrived in Sienna, which was our final destination for the day.  Sienna is another UNESCO site and is a little bit bigger than Orvieto and Assisi, but still has a little bit of the small town feel.  We arrived in the late afternoon, which only gave us about an hour or two to check out the main sights.  As you probably guessed, that involved a church.  By this point, Mike and I were pretty church-ed out, but knowing that this was one of the last sights, we pushed through.

If anyone knows the reasoning behind the stripes, please tell me!

The town of Sienna is charming, but the life of the town is in the square.  It's one of the larger small-town squares we saw and there were tons of people hanging out, kicking a ball or chatting with a friend in the square.  There were restaurants surrounding the fun and we decided that it was time for an apertivo, especially because I was getting hungry.  We had plans to meet up with some other scholars for dinner since we were both going to be in Sienna the same night. 

The shadow kind of gets in the way, but here's the town square.

We ran into the other scholar and his wife during our apertivo and transitioned to dinner.  I had a great salad (refreshing after a lot of pasta and pizza), while the rest of the group indulged on more traditional Italian cuisine.  By the time we finished dinner, it was dark and the town square was lit up.  It was a great way to end the night in Sienna.

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