Brian's Travel Blog: Viaggo Italiano Giorno Cinque -Uno

As I write about day 5 on day 6 I am hungover. Those details will come later but apparently I wrote the following last night before going to bed.

holy crap what an awesome time with family. Going to leave what I type. It is 1:20 am and my cousins and their wives made me drink to much. Holy frickin crap. It is amazing here.

So after our long day of driving from Venice we all slept in. We didn't get up until around 9:30.

Uncle Bob and Auntie Steph had already gone to the grocery store. We had orange juice and pastries and hung by the pool.

The plan for the day was to go see Siena on the way to Poggibonsi to meet up with the Scancarello's who are relatives.

On the way we decided play a game where I would play a saying in Italian ffrom an Ap on my iPhone and we would guess what it was in English. We were having to much fun and had to quiet down so we could find the center of Siena. We had a little trouble figuring out how to get into "el centro". The center of the city. You need to follow the signs with the bullseye on them. But they are small and hard to spot at least for us. Andrea is official navigator and her call sign is officially "bullseye".

Renee ---I thought of you driving us to a VIM. We were all yelling something different. My Uncle has done a terrific job driving us around. There is no way I could drive a stick shift and try to navigate. And forget about the roundabouts. Plus the van is large and the roads very very narrow. Not to mention people seem to stay within the lines and motos ( motorcycles) or Vespas are weavingq in and out. There seems to be no rules for Motos except they do seem to all wear helmets.

I got out the iPad to see what advice Rick Steves had and it helped us find parking. BTW Rick Steves is now Rick James Andrea referred to the guide book guy Rick James and we didn't know what she was talking about. We found free parking and walked to the center after we bought a map of Siena.

Just posted 3 blogs and it took a long time on the wifi we found. Going to break up the blogs into parts from here on out.

So where was I?

We started exploring Siena. We didn't have time to visit the Duomo because we had to be in Poggibonsi by 4pm.

We started to hear loud beating drums and then they came around the corner. I had a video that I will share when I get home so you can hear it. The way it echoed through the streets was very cool.