Lindsey Edens: Siena

Oh me. What is there to say about Siena??

Well, to be honest....not a whole lot. Sorry (or NOT sorry because I usually end up typing/sharing WAY too much info), but this one is gonna be brief.

After leaving Florence around 2PM we arrived after a short train ride to Siena around 3:40PM on Monday, February 2nd and stayed one short night (OH, THANK GOODNESS) until Tuesday, February 3rd.

One thing that I failed to mention about Florence is that it RAINED, AND RAINED, AND RAINED, AND RAINED......and then RAINED SOME MORE. It rained the ENTIRE time in Florence....and didn't let up one bit. Regardless, we stuck to our itinerary, and still went to every last site. In the rain. Soaking wet.

So, did the rain let up in Siena????

NO. It FOLLOWED us there from Florence. Except in Siena (imagine this) it got WORSE. I have never seen so much rain fall without ceasing. Needless to say, this is probably why I did not like Siena that much....because I associate it with a lot of RAIN.

So, back to Siena. Blah.

Look at all those packs lined up on the train ready to go

After getting off the train, we hopped a bus, and by the time we reached our hotel, the sky had fallen out. My pants were completely soaked. Or should I say I was soaked from head to toe. Whatever....I really do just need to get over it. :)

We spent our one night in Siena at Piccolo Hotel "Ill Palio. Ugh. Most ridiculous hotel ever....and not ridiculous in a good way like the young kids are using it these days. Basically it comes down to this:

Our room had no heat; so there was a MASSIVE, WELL LIT heater that had been placed there a couple of hours before arriving to get our room warmed up (you can imagine how much fun a cold room can be if your soaked from pouring down rain), the bathroom was the size of an airplane bathroom (except this bathroom also had a shower...so when you sat down on the toilet your chin actually could rest on the sink and the shower sprayed into the toilet...FUN!!), and basically that night after returning and still soaked, we undress, lay our clothes out to dry, get settled in bed, and the ceiling of our room begins to -not leak- POUR!!! All over the bed and the few dry clothes I had left to wear. HA!!! It's actually quite humorous. Actually. :)

Our hotel in Siena

Our 1st bathroom...the shower head is on the wall to the left but you can't see it...I didn't even bother with a picture of our "airplane" bathroom....you know I was spent if I didn't bother to take a picture

Even better, we go to the front desk to ask to be moved to another room, and no one is there!! Closed up shop. So we go to get Heather N., one of the travel assistants, to see what we should do. Well, after about an hour of trying to reach SOMEONE and retreating to waking up Bernhard (the professor) for help, we were moved to another room. This room, as you can guess, was not planned to be occupied, so, no heater getting it warm and ready, and......get this.....the bathroom was being RENOVATED and there is no other way to describe the way it looked but to say that it was the exact replica of an airplane bathroom....except it had a shower.

Oh well. Needless to say, we kept the key to the first room and used that bathroom (we were only there for 1 night so it really wasn't a big deal) and had a place to lay our heads....together. :)

So, aside from visiting the 2 major attractions of Siena - Piazza del Campo and the Siena Cathedral and Duomo - and having a slightly dull dinner at an overpriced restaurant recommended by the Ill Palio Hotel staff, the whole leaking ceiling/changing rooms was the highlight of our trip to Siena.

That should tell you something, eh???