Day 34 - Monteriggioni to Siena- Saturday July 18, 2015

With the heat, we decided to leave at 6:30am. The lady host left us cereal, fruit, yogurt, orange juice, and milk in the fridge the night before.

I loved the place. It’s so nice to have lots of space, and I thought the two fans worked very well.

We got up early, had our breakfast and were underway around 6:30am as planned. We had just gone through the city gates when I said to Russell ‘I hope you have your hat’. Well he left it on the chair at the breakfast table, and said he was going to have to go back and get it, even if it meant waking up the host. I waited for him where I was, not wanting to add any unnecessary climbing to the day’s total, and enjoying the magnificent scenery. He returned a while later and had managed to retrieve his hat through the window using his walking pole – far better than waking up the hosts!

By the time we set off, it was 7am. We got some lovely shots of the fortress as we were walking away. It really was a beautiful spot. We spent most of the first part of the journey on unpaved roads or footpaths, a lot of it walking through woods with shade – hurray!

The area around Monteriggioni and Abbadia Isola is called ‘Montagnola Senese’ and is rich in wild species, more difficult to find in more populated areas, like deer and wild boars. A special kind of pigs are also raised in this area, called ‘di Cinta Senese’ because they are black with a light stripe around the back. They make very good prosciutti. Somehow that seems like too much info! Anyway, our route notes said we would go by an enclosure with these pigs, but we must have passed too early, they were probably still sleeping in a barn.

We passed by a 210 year old oak tree and the 14^th century Castello di Chiocciola, which is one of the many fortresses that can be found in the Siena backcountry. 

they were part of Siena’s town defenses during its long lasting warfare against Florence, Montalcino or Perugia. The place where the castle was built goes centuries back, even before Etruscan times, but the period of its major development was during the Siena/Florence war (1553-55). At present the castle is part of a wine producing complex. Its name is due to its high tower with a beautiful spiral (Chiocciola) staircase inside.

All was going well today until we made the mistake of following some yellow pilgrim markings instead of following the red/white VF markings. We decided to turn around and go back, which was a wise decision. Shortly after that we started walking on asphalt on a major road into Siena. At this point we were no longer following the VF signs, but Beppe’s directions. It became clear after a while that rather than coming into Siena through the city and on busy roads, we were skirting around the city and coming in from the north (the VF is always going south). This seemed like a nice idea until we realized that we were steeply descending into a gorge and passing under a major overpass, only to have to steeply climb back up. Then we did that again. We had been making really good time up to that point, and then it took us an hour to walk 2km. It was already 34 degrees at 10:30am, and for 15km we never passed any places we could buy water, and the small amount of water we had left was getting very hot. Onward ho. Thankfully, at around 11am we passed a bar and went in and got a cold bottle of water each to drink, and another cold bottle of water to take.

We entered the walled city through the imposing Porta Camollia gate. 

As we walked through Siena we passed the Vodaphone store we had been in yesterday, and without too much difficulty found our l’Hotel Ristorante Chiusarelli.

This was a very classy hotel, and for the first time on our journey I felt a bit embarrassed about going in there dressed like a hiker, sweating buckets, and looking totally exhausted. It was 11:30am when we arrived, and we had walked 20.3 km and climbed 468 meters in the last 4.5 hours in a heat wave.

He told us we an appointment with Beppe at 6pm, which we already knew, and that our room would be ready at 12:30. He told us where there was a bathroom and that we could sit in the lobby or outside in the garden and wait.

We went across the street to a bar and had some pizza for lunch, then went off in search of some new earrings for me. We tried one jewelry shop and the lady said she had no gold earrings because the price of gold was so high, and suggested we try the mall in Piazza Duomo. I found it interesting that the Cathedral Piazza was basically a very large shopping mall. We found a jeweler who spoke no english, but I pointed to my ears that clearly had only one gold earrings, clarified that no, I didn’t expect him to have 1 earring the same as the one I lost, I wanted to buy 2 new matching gold earrings, and he pulled out a tray of gold earrings. We narrowed the selection down to two pairs and I asked how much and he got out a scale and a calculator to determine the price. I’ve never seen that before! Anyway, I now have a lovely new pair of gold earrings.

Next we found a supermarket and bought some supplies, and got back to the hotel around 1:30pm. We had, at this point, done some sightseeing in Siena. I have been dragging around some hair dye in my suitcase for weeks now, which I’ve been concerned might leak or explode in this heat, but hadn’t ever really found a place or time that seemed suitable to do it. This hotel room was the best (for a hotel) room that we have had so far. There was a sitting room with a couch, the bedroom, and a large bathroom. We were there early in the day, so I dyed my hair. After that, Russell and I went and sat out in the garden working on the blog.

At 6pm we had our meeting with Beppe. Russell and I went to the lobby a couple of minutes late, and told the new fellow at the desk we had a meeting with Beppe, and asked if he was there yet. The fellow’s English was quite limited, and he didn’t seem to know who Beppe was, but then he caught on and said ‘oh, Beppe’. Anyway Beppe then came sailing in with a stack of ‘packages’ like the packages we have been getting from him every two weeks.

We asked the receptionist to take some pictures of the three of us, 

then had a nice conversation with Beppe in the lobby sitting room. I had decided that, since we are really relying on him for the next two weeks, we better be very positive, and get the negatives across in a light manner. I think we accomplished that. We told him that for the most part the accommodation has been very good. We told him we often have trouble finding the accommodation, made some suggestions, and pointed out the worst cases. I told him that often the places that are the hardest to find are the best, and he seemed to appreciate that. We then told him the route notes are a bit challenging to follow, thank God for the GPS, pointed out the major mistakes we had made so far, and suggested a few places where the route notes really needed some improving. We also told him that left and right are sometimes reversed. It would have been more helpful if we had kept track of the actual errors, but we have enough to worry about without doing that. Anyway, we don’t know for a while when we go wrong, so it’s hard to go back to the notes and exactly pinpoint the misleading direction.

Anyway, we had nice chat. He knew we had done the Camino with Macs and asked us a few questions comparing the two. We said this was much harder, and the lack of shops along the way was a real problem. He said, if you’re ever out of water, just ask at the houses along the way, Italians are very friendly. We thought later, how? Most of the houses are behind locked gates, with barking dogs on the other side of the fences!

The route for tomorrow to Buonconvento was 36km and the forecast was 40 degrees, so Beppe asked if we would like him to arrange a shuttle to pick us up at Grancia di Cuna tomorrow, at km 18.2. We said yes, that would be much appreciated. So that was arranged for 1pm.

He then said he had booked our hotel in Rome for five nights. I told Macs not to do that after I discovered they were charging us twice the ordinary room rate compared to us booking it ourselves. He then informed us he had chosen a different hotel for us in Rome that was better than Paparelais (which is where my original package said we were staying, and the place I independently booked in Rome for the 4 extra nights). I didn’t say anything to him. I am going to contact Mac’s and sort this out.

There was a wedding at the hotel today so the restaurant was occupied, and we got a voucher for a lovely place downtown (in the historic district). Russell got spaghetti and clams as a primo which he said was absolutely delicious, and veal with porcini as a secondo – very excellent as well. I had a salad, and then veal in tomatoe sauce with green beans. It was very nice, I like vegetables.

Excellent sleep. We were going to get started early again today, but because of the wedding, it was impossible to get an early breakfast for tomorrow. Breakfast was at 7:30am. We had no supplies and it looked like we would walk 18km with no stores again, so breakfast was kind of important. We choose to leave after breakfast.