Enjoying Italian life

After a full day of cycling and Italian opera, we've had a slower paced few days.

Friday:
After breakfast, which we've mainly been making in the apartment, we meandered around the old city, attempting to take the quieter, less travelled paths. This was largely unsuccessful as the tourist day trippers have arrived with their flag holding tour guides! Look, I get that we're part of the tourist hordes, but I'm not a fan of the flag holding tour guides😜 I have taken to holding my phone up in the air to take Gayle past the tours which has been met with Gayle pretending she doesn't know me!

We stumbled upon a few new sites during our wanders, including the very beautiful Siena university, where we took in some lovely ceiling art. We also wandered through the Palazzo Pubblico, the Gothic town hall.

Enough sightseeing, it was time for lunch. We returned to our favourite bar, Bar Impero, for the €15 lunch special: spaghetti pomodori, lemon chicken, salad, bread, and a glass of Vino! Delicious and good value.

We decided we were going to eat at 'home' tonight, so we picked up supplies from the Pam supermarket, i.e., prosecco and wine.

Fresh pasta with pancetta, cheese, and cream - it was quite delicious. Sometimes you just need a regular night in, cooking dinner and some TV.

Saturday:
We went to a new pastry shop/ cafe and had some 'healthy' custard filled delights with the nicest coffee I've had so far. Complaining about coffee outside Australia is my cultural right!

In the afternoon, we went on a bites and stories walking tour; learning about local wine, food, and history. Our guide, Alessandra, was very knowledgeable and told us lots of interesting stories about Siena. She had a tour guide flag - I don't want to talk about it! We tried some local chianti classico, a sangiovese, had a gelato and some panaforte. There were 5 couples: 2 x English , 1 x American, 1 x Belgian, and us. We did learn a lot about the 17 districts in Siena and the palio, the biannual horse races held at Piazza del Campo!

After the tour, we stopped at our local. Bar Impero; a couple of aperol spritz. We walked up the street to i Gabellieri to share another lovely pizza, Vino Rosso, and a cheeky tiramisu 😋もっと詳しく