After all the excitement of hitting five cliffside villages and a non-vertical tower the previous day, today's day trip to Siena--a charming medieval town most famous for its gorgeous Campo, said to be the most famous square in Europe--would be relatively relaxing. Before we embarked on the hour-long bus ride to Siena, however, we had a famous statue to visit.

The Galleria dell'Academia houses a nifty collection of sculptures, but the icon everyone goes to see is Michaelangelo's famous statue of David, a monumental masterpiece of marblework that truly warrants all the praise it receives. David alone is enough to command two to three hour waits outside the museum, just for admission.  And knowing this, we made a point to arrive 15 minutes before the museum's 8:30 opening. Evening so, we still had to wait half an hour before we were allowed inside. After purchasing our tickets, we wandered around several rooms, going through a nice musical instruments of history exhibit and passing several rooms of Rennaissance-era statues before we arrived at the piece-de-la-resistance (to borrow a French term loosely meaning "the feature showcase").

David was... to put it simply... incredible. Take my little speech comparing the Sistine Chapel ceiling to the Mona Lisa, replace the chapel with David, and repeat it. In short, David alone is definitely worth the Galleria admission fee. Standing seventeen feet tall, on a good five foot base, the statue is much taller and larger than most people expect. It is a towering centerpiece at the end of a long hall in the museum, bathed in soft, diffused light emanating from the frosted skylight glass above. But the true source of awe comes from the incredible articulated detail. Students of life portraits or human anatomy would rejoice in David's presence. Each muscle is toned and sculpted to astonishingly lifelike detail. Simple things, like joints at the elbow, knee, or ankle, are carefully defined. And of course, the girls couldn't help but stare at his rock-hard abs (sort of a pun, but methinks this may be where the expression actually originated), sculpted pectoral muscles, and yes... very pleasant-to-look-at buttocks. Even the expression of the veins and the style of the hair was impressive.  To carve such richness out of marble demanded incredible skill, and it's not surprising that this was the commissioned art piece that put Michaelangelo's name on the map.

We spent a good hour at the museum, and half of that was occupied by admiring the statue of David. However, we still had a day in Siena to get to, so around 9:45, we headed back to our hostel to drop off the souvenirs we had bought, then sauntered over to the other side of Santa Maria Novella train station, where the SITA bus depot was located, to purchases bus tickets to Siena and board an express bus that left at 10:30 and arrived in Siena about an hour later. After a couple of minutes getting oriented, followed by a quick stop a local post office (much easier to find this time around) to mail some postcards, we began our walking tour around Siena.  First stop: Il Campo.

Among the architecture and urban design realm, the Campo is known as one of the most beautiful squares in the world. This shell-shaped plaza, with scallops sloping down toward the bell tower side, is Siena's premier public space and constantly attracts visitors and locals alike to gather, sit down, sunbathe, sketch, eat, chat, or just relax. Surrounding by a veritable wall of restaurants and outdoor dining patios, it is a lively space at all times of the day, and there's just something about the warm, medieval texture of the buildings around it that imparts a feeling of majesty. It's hard to explain, and photos don't often do the place enough justice. But being there, I really did feel that everything my professors had ever said about this place was true. It was utterly fantastic.

Needless to say, after walking around, taking in the ambiance, browsing some of the boutiques, and finally finding some lunch, I plopped myself in the middle of the square and started with my Italian seafood salad, which proved to be quite wholesomely delicious while being healthy at the same time! Andrea and Jill enjoyed their meal next to me, of course, but as we dined and soaked in the overcast day, we couldn't help but notice some rather ominous dark gray storm clouds in the distance.

"Better eat fast," I mused. And no sooner did I finish my last bite of salad that I felt the first drops of rain fall lightly onto my head. Quickly gathering our items, we stood up and began moving toward the more sheltered dining patios along the perimeter of the Campo. Slowly, the drizzle eased into a steady rain. Other folks started unfurling their umbrellas, standing up in preparation for upcoming precipitation. And just as we had walked under a canopy, we heard a powerful crack of thunder, and the storm broke.

Within moments, the Campo had become the bathtub basin of an incredible shower. Buckets upon enormous buckets of rain hammered down upon the ground from the sudden cloudburst, and the people in the square scattered like ants. Scatter was the perfect word to use; within ten seconds, the plaza went from being occupied by hundreds of reclining guests to being occupied by no one. People had either rushed toward the canopies that hung over the outdoor dining areas of the restaurants along the Campo's perimeter or had decided to leave altogether.

Knowing that weather systems often move swiftly in Europe, I expected this storm to blow itself out rather quickly. Five to ten minutes would be all that this downpour would last. And yet, in this case, I was wrong. As we watched in a mixture of awe and glee, the thunder continued to rumble--long, rolling beats, pounding furiously against the sky, reverberating with mighty fury in the atmosphere--and the rain continued to beat down upon the earth as though aimed from some galactic water cannon from the heavens. It was truly a sight to see, this sudden change of weather, and we spent a good portion of time simply staring.  That and Jill ordered a coffee to go to pass the time.

Eventually, the rain did die down enough to warrant walking around. When the downpour had diminished to a casual drizzle, we opened our umbrellas and stepped out from under the canopy and headed toward the Duomo, Siena's main cathedral.

Despite the gloomy daylighting brought on by the storm, the cathedral still appeared splendid in its ornate, detailed, extremely embellished way. The stonework and reliefs on the exterior echoed a sort of Gothic style that had been reinterpreted in an Italian way, and the gilded paintings across the top of the front facade were still luminous despite the dreary sky. We couldn't help but notice that construction was going for this cathedral as well. By this time, we had lost track of the number of buildings we had seen under some form of renovation or reconstruction.

The interior of the cathedral presented a stark contrast to any church I had ever seen before. For one, there were a lot of stripes painted horizontally on the walls, columns, and pilasters. This was a noticeable trait of the Italian Gothic (if my memory of architecture history serves me well), and it was interesting to see it spread all around indoors. Andrea and Jill weren't as big of fans on this particular style, and while I agreed that places like Notre Dame and St. Peter's had more aesthetically pleasing church spaces, I did feel that this coloring motif certainly made everything stand out more than in other cathedrals. There was also the coffered dome, vividly colored, which held the same effect that St. Peter's Basilica had--a sense of depth that appeared painted on and not actual, even though there were coffers in the dome structure.

We spent the rest of our walking tour exploring the narrow medieval streets and trying not to slip on the slick road stones. Despite the turbulent skies, I saw a lot of beauty in the colors, texture, and age of the buildings. The sense of history was thick all around me, and it lent a decadence texture to the urban ambiance. Siena was still a medieval town at heart, and it carried a deep charm that made me wish I had more time to explore all around the city, rather than just browse its most famous sights.

Our jaunt eventually took us back behind the Campo, where we noted a steep elevation drop just behind the bell tower (ground level on the Campo side was a good three stories above ground level on the opposite side). By the time we returned to the Campo, I was pleased with my day, and I "rewarded" the girls' patience by declaring the rest of the afternoon theirs.  Any shopping, gelato-eating, or window browsing they wanted to do was fine by me, and I was willing to be official "tagger alonger" with them as they looked for presents--for friends and themselves!

Thus, the rest of the day was spent trying to dodge the rain, which still occasionally came down in buckets, and looking for high quality olive oil, balsamic vinegarette, various deli meats, shoes, caligraphy supplies, book, and other general souvenirs. By 6:00, we were ready to go home, and so we caught a returning bus back to Florence. Dinner that night was a combination of various things we had bought at a supermarket in Siena. It proved to be quite cheap, especially for the amount of food we had, and we also indulged in those oh-so-luscious cherries Jill had bought the day before in Vernazza.

All in all, it was a wonderful, if not wet, day spent in Tuscany, a region that was quickly becoming an unforgettable favorite.

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For more photos of Siena, check out my Facebook photo albums:
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