Siena 5/28 - 6/8, Part 1

I arrived in Siena around 10:00.  The bus stop was very close to San Domenico (St. Dominic’s) church, which I appreciate since I am carting around this 45 pound bag of too much stuff.  My B&B isn't far, only about half a mile down cobblestone streets.  Egads!  As I walk, the path is a familiar one as I remember it from the one day I spent here in 2006 with the Totally Tuscany cooking trip.  I get a little misty thinking back to that day as I think of my tour group - I am still in contact with them and have even traveled with some of them again to additional locations in the states.       

I was in Siena for 11 nights; I took 165 pictures, drank 5-6 bottles of wine, ate Gelato 4 times, went to church 6 times, walked up and down over 1000 steps, and walked just about every street that crossed my path.  I love Siena.  This is a town that you can – and can’t – get lost in.  It is built on a hill and much of the wall that surrounds the town is still intact.  Its people are generous, warm and open, even though their lives are saturated by tourism.  I found all that I met to be patient with my ‘Ital-english’ and willing to let me try my hardest not to butcher their language.  I really like it when they ask about English words and slang.  It makes for some fun conversations. 

I have been in Italy long enough now that I say ‘si’ and ‘non’ much more readily than ‘yes’ and ‘no’, ‘per favore’, ‘grazie’ and ‘prego’ rather than ‘’please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘you’re welcome’.   It is just more natural.  And when I do speak in English, it’s with more of an Italian accent.  I don’t do it to be cool or anything, it just comes out that way.  It's like when I was living in North Carolina, after a little while I picked up a southern accent.   Now when I hear pure American English, it almost sounds too harsh to my ears.  I am picking up a few more Italian words and can even make a few sentences like a 3 or 4 year old and be understood.  Even when they respond in rapid fire Italian and I keep saying ‘non capisco’, I am met with smiles and hand pats and then they just keep going on anyway.  I really do love these people! 

The Alma Domus is the church-run hotel where I stayed.  As I am a single traveler, I get a small skinny room, but it was comfy, had A/C and great view.  I get mesmerized watching the sparrows  outside my window and how they dive bomb to eat the mosquitoes and other bugs flying around out there.  They twist and turn like professional WW2 flyers in a dog fight.  I appreciate their work – I have yet to have found one mosquito bite! 

Here is a shot from another angle.  That is San Domenico in the background, my hotel is a little bit in front, to the right with the arched windows. 

And anytime I left my hotel, no matter which way you turn, there were steps - lots and lots of steps…  Welcome to Siena!

I spent the first few days just walking through town, getting to know it as I was going to be here a while.  I found my favorite cappuccino spot (1.20 per cup), my favorite wine store, my favorite cheese shop (pecorino!!!) and my favorite pizza joint – Mister Pizza.   A word about Italian pizza, it is perfection!   The crust is thin, wafer thin, and all the ingredients added to it are fresh.  Mister Pizza (I don’t know if that is his name, but that is what I called him) gave me a lesson in pizza making and let me come back to watch him in action.  He stressed the importance of a thin crust – “why American’s want a thick crust, I don’t know”, he said, “the flavor is in the sauce, cheese and toppings.”  “You want bread – eat bread!”  He wouldn’t give me his dough recipe, he said that I must discover in my own kitchen.   But he did show me one of his greatest secrets to a good pie – after you smear a light coating of tomato sauce, put the pizza in the oven and bake it for few minutes so the sauce can marry the bread.   Then pull it out and add your cheese and toppings and bake again so they can all get happy together.   He also stressed the importance of going light on the quantity of toppings.  Add them, but don’t add a huge mound of them.   He said this is how Italians can eat pizza every day and not get big and fat because the pizza is not bit and fat.  He was quite the character and he made a great pizza pie.

Every day I walk for hours and hours, it helped to work off all the pasta, pizza, gelato and wine that I am consuming.  But once I stopped and ordered a glass of wine, the walking was done for the day.  There was drinking and eating to do!

Here’s a photo montage to let you see what I saw every single day.   No, it is not all 165 of them, but almost…

Now can you see why I love it here?  My knees ache at the end of every day, but I don’t care.   Everything is so good here – the food, the wine, the people, the air.  Everything…

There are also a lot of churches here, San Domenico and the Cathedral being the biggies.   San Domenico is a very plain church in that it has more space than treasures.  It has beautiful painting and statues, but not a lot of gold coating its walls.  It also contains the chapel of Saint Catherine, the patron saint of Siena.  She lived in the mid 1300’s was the youngest of 25 children, and was an outspoken and influential woman in a time when women were neither.  San Domenico even has, on display, her thumb enclosed in glass as well as her skull – which they have filled with putty so you can kind of see what her face looked like.  Weird…  I have since found out that back in the days ‘of yore’, having a piece of a saint’s body brought the individual owner or church great power. 

Every day all the church bells ring at 5:30p – that is when the Rosary is recited.  I happened to be walking into San Domenico at that time on my first day here.  I carry my Grandmother’s rosary with me and thought she would like it if I would stay, so I did.  For the non-Catholics in the audience, the Rosary is basically a string of prayer beads.   It takes about 30 minutes to say the Rosary.   In Italian it takes a little longer as there are more Italian words in the prayers and, at the end of the strand, they pray to more saint than I knew existed.   But this is a praying kind of town, so I go with the flow and I love hearing the Italian language, so I just sit and enjoy...    

                                                                                                                     

The church bells ring again, every day, at 6:00p to call everybody to Mass.  Since I was sitting there in the pew and had just finished with the Rosary, I stayed for Mass as I am mesmerized by the musical rhythm of the language.   This is why I went to church so often here – when the bells rang, if I was close, I made a point to be there to hear the language.  On Sundays they had a ‘program’ so I could follow along with the Italian and do my best to participate.  On the other days and for the Rosary, I just sat quietly and listened. 

I’m glad I came to Siena after Rome.  In all truth, seeing the churches in Rome had a negative effect on me.   I am offended by the obscene display of wealth in the Catholic Churches while there is such poverty right outside their door.   Yet we, in Catholic communities, are continuing and sometimes intensely pushed to give more money to fund missions, church restorations, and retirement funds for the clergy as if the church is in desperate need of money.   Vatican City is the richest country in the world – I never fully understood this until I saw it with my own eyes.   They are sitting on millions, if not billions, of dollars.   I find this very disheartening...  I don’t understand what this display, the visual message, has anything in common with Jesus Christ and His teachings.  Jesus was a homeless transient whose message was one of love and giving and taking care of one another.  He hung out with the poor and the broken, the lowest of the lows, and did nothing but offer them love.  He didn’t ask for money – quite the contrary.   In the bible, the same book we hear from in every Mass, it documents that His teaching were based on giving up worldly possessions and doing everything for love.     

My personal belief is that if Jesus were alive today (and who’s to say that He isn’t), he would be a missionary, very much like Mother Theresa.  I have two quotes to add and then I will close out this post with another personal thought before I move off of this subject.  Here are the two quotes:

“It is not in how much we do, but how much love we put into the doing.”  -Mother Theresa

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”  -Matthew 6:21

I do not say these things to offend anyone or to imply that I am right and others are wrong.  I say them only because this is my opinion – and like bellybuttons, we all have one.  These are just my thoughts, my views, my doubts, my questions - - - my truths…  I would like to state, for the record if you will, that I am very thankful for the basis of Christianity that my Catholic upbringing instilled in me.  I believe in God with all my heart.  I don’t know who or what He is, but I firmly believe that He exists and His love holds my soul.   I have been graced with so many personal ‘miracles’ that is it impossible for me not to believe.  While I believe in the message, I don’t always believe in the messenger or how the corporation of the messengers is managed and presented. 

I close with that thought…  Thank you for allowing me to stand on my soap box and speak my opinion. 

End of part 1