Buona Pasqua!!

Happy Easter all! The church bells have been ringing on and off all day here. It is crappy, rainy, cold, grey day here. I guess they didn’t get the memo that Easter Sunday is supposed to be a nice, warm, sunny day. So we are stuck inside today, Jim working on a paper, and I am getting caught up on a million and six things that I’ve been putting off.

So, to stave off the cold grey day, how’s about some pictures from a nicer, sunnier day when we went sightseeing? San Gimignano is one of the Tuscan hill towns. It dates from the 13th century or so. Very rustic and pretty, but the guide book that I like, Rick Steves’ Florence and Tuscay, doesn’t have very nice things to say about the authenticity of the town. It does seem to be a popular tourist destination, which is one reason why we decided to go during early March.

San Gimignano is only about 25 miles from Florence, but it takes a 1.5 hour bus trip to get there. Part of the reason is that it took 25 minutes to get out of Florence. The bus leaves from just outside the city center. It has to wind its way through the little narrow streets and narrowly miss pedestrians, cars and motorcycles that are wildly whipping in and out of the traffic. Kind of hair raising.

You have to change buses in Poggibonsi. The bus terminal is at the end of a cul-de-sac with NOTHING around it. There isn’t a sign or an announcement, you just kind of have to know that this is where you get off. (Don’t worry - pictures are coming soon.) I’m kind of a nervous traveller; just ask Jim. I get worried and will check and recheck my tickets a six times in about ten minutes. If it isn’t well marked, I will fret and worry if this is the right place. This was one of those times. (If you are thinking of doing this trip - the correct stop is at the bottom of a big loop. There is a building with a clock on it (the bus/train station). If you are there during high tourist season, just follow everyone else. We kind of did that. We shared the bus with a bunch of German students.) We had to wait around for about 25 minutes until the next bus came to take us to San Gimignano. Thankfully the bus had a sign on it. Much less nervous at this point.

San Gimignano is in the region of Chianti, the famous Italian wine region. I was expecting to drive through rows and rows of grape vines; something like Napa. It was nothing like that though. I think we saw only two or three vineyards. It was very pretty and scenic. But the bus was full of German students on a tour and so I didn’t whip out the camera and start taking pictures. (Remember the whole dork thing.)

But the scenes from the bus stop were very pretty. You can even see some vineyards!

Of course, I had to get some pictures with Jim. A LONG time ago, I took a photography class. A few things have stuck with me and so sometimes I take a long time when composing pictures. This is Jim waiting for me to “Hurry up and take the damn picture”:

I didn’t really like this photo, so I took another one and told him to act like he had a glass of wine:

I like this photo better. Jim took some pictures of me too, but I look stupid and because this is my blog, I’m not going to post them. So there.

We did some picture swapping with another couple:

Look at those blue skies! It was warm enough that I could actually take off my jacket too. WOO HOO!!

So enough of scenery. Boring. The old part of San Gimignano is surrounded by walls:

Obviously not used for defense anymore. The tourists don’t usually bring catapults and ladders. You can kind of get an idea of the height of the walls. The little red dots is the shirt of someone standing about 4 ft from the walls - 20 ft tall or so.

Everything was OK up until this point. However we walked into the old city and all of a sudden, I was in Canada again. I am pretty good with maps and directions. I don’t get lost that often, except in Canada. I can’t find my way around Canada to save my life. I just hand the map over to Jim and enjoy the ride. San Gimignano was almost like that. I couldn’t read the map for about 2 hours. I got us so lost and turned around. I’m surprised that we didn’t end up in Siena with all of the “walking tours” that I took us on.

When you first walk into the city through the old gate (not shown in the picture above, but it is about 1 inch to the right), you see the towers of San Gimignano.

The towers are not part of the city walls. (Which was news to me.) They are in the *middle* of town. Apparently, the towers came first and then the walls. Each of the towers belonged to a different family. Before the walls were built around the city, they were used for protection from marauding armies and brigands. Once the walls were built, they were used when the families started warring on each other.

There are 14 towers left in San Gimignano. There used to be 60 or so. But the plague (plaque? I guess they are both diseases, but only one will kill you.) in the 1340’s wiped out 2/3’s of the population and Florence moved in and took over. They forced the families to tear down most of the walls, just to show that they could.

This was my favorite tower:

If you look at the walls, you can see where the old roofline of the buildings next to it used to be. (Remember that whole dork thing?)

In the first instance of us “walking around”, i.e., Vanessa getting us lost, we walked to the highest point in the town, Rocca di Montestaffoli, an old fortress with a commanding view of the countryside. I guess this was so you could see the armies sneaking up on you. From this point, you could see the towers.

I had a picture of the both of us, taken on the timer, but I looked stupid so I’m not posting them. (Plus Jim thought they were silly.) From here, you could see some of the old walls too.

Jim was excited because you could see some grapes in the distance:

OK, you’ll just have to take our word for it. There were some vineyards out there! But see what I mean about the comparison between Napa and Chianti? You really have to look hard to see the vineyards here.

That’s enough for one day. Tomorrow I’ll post the rest of the pictures from SG. I also have some stuff from Ferrara, and random photos from around Florence. I’d say it’s about a week worth of posts!

~ by chemistryandwine on March 23, 2008.