Only in Italy…

There was a chocolate festival in front of Santa Croce church this weekend. Tables under tents choc-full of truffles, giant slabs of hazelnut, coconut and espresso flavors, chocolate in the shapes of sheep, salamis, and even carpentry tools. There were chocolate and vanilla fondue sets downpouring liquid candy, buckets full of churning taffy, steaming vats of pure hot chocolate. The more creative tables held displays of chocolate animals, and yes – chocolate wrenches, hammers, lighters, chains and random tools covered with cocoa powder to make them look even more realistically rustic. My roommates got hot chocolate that came in what seemed like small cups – we couldn’t even finish two between the three of us it was so rich. In my usual unadventurous purchasing, I bought a dark chocolate truffle the size of a golf ball. Boy was it good. Soft powered cocoa covering a thick, creamy center of bittersweet Italian chocolate. Too bad the festival’s not here every week!

And on Saturday – to Siena! The program’s planned day-trip was plagued with rain, fog, and chills but it was still a fabulous day. At the crack of dawn, my roommates and I trooped across town blindly and boarded a bus full of similarly half-asleep students. On the bus’s upper deck, everyone slept semi-soundly for the hour ride to Siena while I watched the Tuscan countryside flying by: everything in browns and greens, villas with chickens, hills rolling with light fog. Our bus teetered on the edges of winding cliffs as we snaked toward Siena. When we arrived, light rain sprayed as we emerged from the bus and began our walking tour. First stop, a view of the countryside; then, the church of Saint Catherine. Inside, Catherine’s head and finger are preserved mummy-like for modern visitors to marvel at. Her head is somewhere below the church’s floors, but we were able to view her finger – looking like a burnt French-fry in its glowing glass display-case. Also in this church is a single portrait painted during her lifetime, so they assume it illustrates the most true-to-life depiction of her face. All the other paintings, of which there are many, were done after St. Catherine’s death. My favorite part of the church’s interior, though, was the colorful stained-glass windows behind the altar. They were so different from others I have seen so far, very unlike the modest, conservative mosaic windows of the Florence Duomo. At St. Catherine’s, they looked almost like cartoons. The colors were far more vibrant and playful than other cathedrals, and the faces and positions of the people depicted in the stained glass were like caricatures – large eyes and goofy facial expressions drawn above simplistic outfits you might see in a children’s book. I don’t know why and didn’t ask, but I suppose it’s possible these windows were not part of the original church.

After visiting Catherine’s cathedral and the separate quarters where she lived and worked, we visited Siena’s famous Duomo. It is similar on the outside to the one in Florence, but inside, the cathedral has about twenty pillars holding it up that boast startling thick green stripes. They look like huge floor-to-ceiling trees that someone painted in Alice’s Wonderland. A side chapel of this church holds several original statues done by Bellini, and one by Donatello. The floor is distractedly covered with contemporary boards and outlined with duct tape, to preserve parts of the tile that people have previously weathered with boots and high-heels. Some parts are roped off for us to see though, displayed images created in forest green, red and cream tiles that look like those fill-in-the-color games in coloring books. One chunk of tile makes the face, another an arm, another the dress, until a full person appears in the slabs. I wonder what’s under the parts of floor we can’t see…
The final most interesting part of Siena is this enormous town square shaped like a bowl. The entire square is a giant brick cereal bowl surrounded by shops at its upper edges. This is where Siena’s horse races are held – a fact Allie and I wondered about throughout the tour, because how do horses run well on the inclined, slippery brick ground? I guess because they’re race horses and they just do. Makes for quite an interesting spectacle, which Sienans are extremely proud of and display on just about every postcard or souvenir piece I saw. They have reason to love this small city – it is quaint but lively, petite but full of shopping and dining, and has some of the prettiest little side-streets and apartment areas that look even more typically Italian than Florence’s. I’d call it more of a large hill-top town. Bella!

Even more petite and adorable was our next stop – San Gimignano. This is truly a beautiful hill-top town, much smaller than Siena, with only a single main street passing through it. I could walk the town in probably ten minutes. Up, up, up by pottery shops and cafes, until you reach the hill’s peak and look down on Tuscany below. It is isolated and dreamlike – with I think only one hotel and a population about the size of our tour group. The buildings are uniform, in typical gray bricks above cobblestone streets, and the whole place just seems more peaceful than the city of Florence. Although it was pouring rain by the time we toured the one main street and half the group was without umbrellas (including me), it was easy to see that this was a beautiful town I would definitely have to return to on a nicer day. When the fog is absent, the best thing to do in San Gimignano is to climb the towers that rise above it and provide an even more breathtaking view of the countryside – something I’ll certainly be going back to do. And so, the day ended and our group sloshed back to our bus in squeaking sneakers and wet-dog hair. Needless to say, I slept great last night and am focusing my Sunday on achieving the maiden voyage to GustaPizza. I’ll let you know how it goes. Pace! (Means “peace”, pronounced “pachay”).