Beautiful Tuscany - Siena/San Gimignano

We wind north through the beautiful Tuscan countryside - lovely rolling, green hills as far as the eye can see. The sat nav does its usual trick of taking us up some roads too narrow for our van, down some dead ends and off the main road for a few miles of country lanes for no apparent reason.

We arrive in Sienna and after a few trips around the roundabouts on the outskirts, we find a stopover where we can walk into town from. Summer is in full swing now, so it’s a hot walk up a short road to reach the city walls. This place is unique in that there are escalators in the edge of the walls that you can hop on to ge up to the top of the city - we go up 4 elevators which is a great treat for the children (although we almost take the stairs for one set as we think it’s broken, and then realise it’s just stopped while no one is on it). We enter the top of the city and walk down through some small streets to a beautiful church in a piazza.

We grab a map and find a little snack shop, where the children choose a sweet treat, and carry on down the narrow streets. We have promised them ice cream so we find a little place on the corner, queue order and then get a big surprise when the lady asks for 13euros for the 2 single scoop comes we’ve just ordered! Ok children - DO NOT DROP THAT ICE-CREAM! We even have to take it back when we find they’ve left the paper cone wrapper inside Coen’s ice cream - for 6.50, we feel within our rights to get a new one! It is amazing ice-cream, second only to our first gelato in Rovinj, Croatia.

We turn the corner and find the big Piazza Del Campo and realise this is why the ice-cream was so expensive. This is the set of a Bond scene. A beautiful sloping open Piazza, set in a circle with shops, restaurants and cafes around the edge and a big church as it’s centre piece. People watching people, tourists and locals side by side, every nationality can be found in these tiny tourist draws, which always amazes us! We hear some music and see a marching band from one of the churches are marching through the narrow streets dressed in their church gowns. Amelia loves this and watches until the very last one has gone past. We then wander through to find some other beautiful buildings and then look for restaurants that have been recommended to us. We order pizza and pasta from a very nice waiter who the children are quite taken with (especially Coen who keeps asking for ‘man’ to all the others), and enjoy food (and Prosecco) with a lovely panoramic view of the city.

The next morning we head over to San Gimignano, another beautiful city contained within its old city walls. We find a place to park which has a bus that takes us to town, and head into the old city. The city is perched on top of a Tuscan hillside so that you get amazing panoramic views the whole way around. Inside there is a central piazza with a large well, we find out this was a very important place, during war time when the city walls would have been closed, there was no other way of inhabitants getting water (we learn this as we are sat next to a group of American students who have a tour guide with them...Nic decided to follow them for a while to learn a bit!!). Amelia has her scooter so enjoys the open space, Coen chases pigeons and then argues with Amelia to have a go on her scooter. We get to a beautiful viewpoint to see beautiful Tuscany, and decide it’s too hot to be here, get back down to the bus and head out to Florence...Read more