Day 18

Pienzia - Montalcino - Siena - Florence - Bologna

Our third rainy day of the trip - thats still fab odds! After a liesurely breakfast we take a quick stroll to make some purchases

Firstly are some espresso cups made by a local ceramics artist. We have loved the Italian coffee and this is a must to bring home with us. Interestingly, the artist is based in a cave-like basement... Complete with an original well that looks to be bottomless from within the cave. It's a great forum to display her work... Subdued lighting in little nooks and crannies, interesting pieces of ceramics work amongst anchient tools left by previous users of the cave

The second purchase is a watercolor by a local artist... What a pleasure to have the artist (who knows no English) try to describe where the little church is which she depicts in the painting we buy... an awesome attempt at communication (not overly successful communication, but we all got the gist - I think).

Off to Montalcino - 20min down the road... a one-road-in-and-out, walled village. The rain keeps us from exploring this wee town, so we head up to Siena...

Siena is described as the most "gothic" city in Italy and I have visions of great gargoyles and dark lanes (those in the know will realise I'm a bit naive about historic architecture here)... What we find are long, sporadic, rabbit-warren-like rows of dirty 4-story brick buildings... The highlight is when Tomtom loses GPS coverage, so we drive blind - following a police car through tight winding lanes owned by throngs of tourists and students. We finally give up in some square, having lost the police car... Full of tourists... Photographing a church... the top attraction in town... Bonus - we would never have found it if we were looking ;)

Driving in one direction, Tomtom finally gets GPS coverage and we are on to Florance... Which we find is so full of tourists we can hardly breathe. We take some pics of the fancy church there (3rd top attraction of Italy apparently), but to be honest we are a bit over photographing churches - wouldn't it be great if churches spent their funds on helping people out instead of building fabulous buildings (I have a funny feeling Jesus had something to say about this?)

We finally pull into Bologna (the home of spaghetti bolognaise) at 8pm... And we are again staggered at getting a good room at a great price... A 350 euro per night room for 110euro! Too much driving today... Need sleep before we fly to London tomorrow!