Last night we did laundry and let it dry overnight and this morning, as we took a walk in our “neighborhood.” The sun was out today, for a change, and it was a beautiful spring morning to walk, enjoy the thick vegetation of Tuscany, listen to the birds sing and smell the blossoms. After our clothes were dry we packed what we would need for a long weekend in the southern part of Tuscany.
We stopped in Camaiore and picked up some bread, meat, cheese and a bottle of Coke Zero for lunch in a park in town, before hitting the road for San Gimignano. Our plan was to spend the night there, then go on to Siena tomorrow for the weekend, and on Sunday go to Montelpuchiano. We wound our way through the Tuscan countryside and in about two hours arrived at San Gimignano without incident late this afternoon, even though for some reason our GPS is not working. Bev gets the award for navigator extraordinaire. Driving in Italy for an American is definitely a two-person job!
As is typical of a lot of old Italian cities, we had to park our car in a lot outside the city wall and then walk into the city centro. We walked around the old part of San Gimignano to get the “lay of the land,” and because it was Thursday, it was market day here. There were a lot of people milling around, and a lot of them were tourists. We heard Americans from time to time, but most tourists seemed to be Italians. We consulted Rick Steves for a decent place to stay. We weren't looking for anything elaborate; just something clean and modest, especially since we were only staying one night here. Following a tip from Rick, we went into a tobacco shop and asked about a room. It was about six o'clock in the evening. The woman we talked to, Vanna, was very nice, spoke good English and told us they had one double room left for just tonight and that it was a “suite” that they usually ask 120 euro for, but she offered it to us for 90euro. Rick's book had said that her doubles went for 80 euro a night, and we told her that. She said that she had no more double rooms left, and this suite was her only room for tonight. We hesitated and she threw in breakfast, for 5 euro each; we hesitate a couple seconds more and she came down to 90 euro and Bev said we'd take it. She then took us to our room and it was beautiful—clean, spacious and it had a beautiful bathroom, shower and jacuzzi tub down some stairs from the bedroom, but within the suite. Vanna then drove us to our car so we could get our luggage, and brought us back and dropped us off at the room, gave us several recommendations for dinner, and we said goodnight to her. Rick Steves had commented in his book that San Gimignano is a little touristy and tacky during the day, with hoardes of tourists coming from buses and otherwise to hit the tourist traps that are unmistakably here. But he said he finds the evenings here to be charming, so we went to dinner and walked around a bit.
It was my brother Terry's birthday, so I called him to wish him happy birthday, and we went to bed in our very nice room in San Gimignano. Tomorrow we plan to briefly tour the local civic museum before heading out for Siena late in the morning.
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