For this rather casual, low pressure traveller, recognition came slowly - these tours are highly marshalled, near military events.
Reveille is at 6:00 am, bags packed by 6:30, fed by 6:45, and on the bus by 7:30. After one of many head counts, we are deployed to Florence (Firenze) with a stop at Siena on this second day of operations. The anarchist within grumbles, nearly rebelling, but then trudges compliantly to the bus. Reflecting now, happily so.
Northbound after Rome, the countryside streams by, each scene better than any postcard or promotional poster of Italy. The realization seeps in - this is the real thing: there is a veracity about Italy that goes deep down and from long ago. None of our cheap highway culture, the strip-malls and billboards of Canada and, more so, the USA - our roadway development that makes travel a protracted shopping trip. No! here are wonderful unfolding scenes of Medieval fortresses, hill-top villages, crowned by ancient cathedrals. Encroaching are bucolic countryside vineyards and wildly-shaped plots of long tilled land, laced by ancient lanes and wandering narrow roadways. Occasionaly we stop for pee and tea
crossing the Latium and Tuscan countryside. Noon we pull into Siena for liberty, a few hours of wandering.
Siena remains a medieval hilltop city. Long ago its city walls failed to stop the aggressive Florentines. But thereafter those same walls very successfully resisted the march of architectural progress. Today Siena remains the heartland of Romanesque and Italian Gothic structures. Wandering its labyrinthine narrows one passes brilliant jewels of churches and then a grand piazza cracks it all open.Here Il Duomo spreads out, with its striped, marble campanile reaching
to 13th century heaven. Its dark marble dome is portal to that heaven while its icon laden walls resonate with the priestly chants of eight centuries. The greatest artists of the day - Pisano, Donatello and others - crafted the fonts, sculptures, frescos and friezes that give the dark holiness a sort of particularity as one quietly paces from sacred place to sacred place. One box is claimed to hold the baptizing arm of John the Baptist, the arm that baptized Jesus.
Doting fathers take many pictures of their daughters. One more and then we are on
our way to the Piazza del Campo, a gigantic scalloped plaza, once claimed by Montaigne to have been the finest of any in the world. Home to Font Gaia it also is the focus for the Palio delle Contrade, a horse race like no other. In this race the pomp and pageantry of medieval Siena is spiced to red-hot by flag-waving, intense local rivalries that have survived the centuries. The race itself is said to be cutthroat. We are lucky in an unlucky way because today is horse selection day and the square is packed. The race is three days hence but the party has begun.
Unfortunately our demanding schedule does not permit us the joy of the party, only the jostle of crowds. After our walk-about it is back to the bus and down the road. Next stop, Michelangelo's David and Florence, arguably the historical epi-centre of genius on planet Earth. And food and sleep.
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