Siena and Cortona

Last Saturday morning we hired a little car (Fiat Panda) and with no map and no sat nav (welcome to Hertz Prato!), off we set, on the ‘wrong side of the road’. The speed and rudeness of the Italian drivers initially wrong-footed us, but Mike fought back hard calling on all his South African driving experience! Our ‘Tom-tom’ was an 11 year-old who maintained his ‘cool’ long enough to navigate his family through the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside...picture postcard stuff. Stunning GREEN landscapes, olive groves, stone walls, villas dotted on the hills and cypress trees standing like exclamation marks on the horizon. We were charmed by Siena (named after our little friend Siena Whyte!). The hill town has traditionally played second fiddle to Florence, but has a unique charm of its own and is well worth a visit. Highlights included the shell-shaped Piazza del Campo and the duomo is the best we’ve seen to date – indescribable (see picture). Cortona was also lovely, but since being popularised by Frances May’s book (Under the Tuscan Sun), it now attracts droves of tourists, which is beginning to upset US locals!