Halloween

Saturday

As we had planned we went back to Castelvecchio for dinner Saturday evening. Although located not far from the more frequented areas such as the Duomo and the Campo this is in fact one of the oldest parts of the walled city of Siena and even its name attests to the fact that at one time a very old castle stood on this hill. The food was very good, wines delicious and all very reasonably priced. One that we recommended after having lunch here last March and can certainly recommend after having dinner now as well.

Sunday.

Another beautiful warm and sunny day in Siena, although Susan chose to stay in for much of it and work on her herbal DVD course while I went out to take pictures. The city is literally crawling with tourists right now – and most of them Italian. Monday is Halloween, a US festival that is starting to take some root here apparently although trick or treating I don’t think has caught on yet if it will at all. No it’s the costumes for the kids and the partying, which is the central attractive feature. And to top it all off Tuesday is All Saints’ Day, a major national holiday in Italy so it plans to be a rather quiet time for us I’m sure.

Monday.

Notwithstanding all the festivities we had arranged with the Patti and Roberto Bechi to take the train to Asciano Monday to have lunch. We took one of the new “mini-train” which look like some sort of bullet train but much smaller (they have a driver’s cab at either end) and the entire train is essentially one car with flexible joints, a variety of seating arrangements, very nice WCs and quiet as well. Pretty cool. Another cool thing was we could see the Bechi’s house from the train just as we were entering town. Originally we thought we might grab something in town but when we got to Asciano and Roberto picked us up he said why not just go to their place where we could also talk business. So we headed north out of town and met up with Patti who had prepared a tasty lunch of salad, chicken sandwiches, fruit cheese and wine. We then spent some time hammering out additional details on the video interview project. Now that the Italian interviews are in transcript form we can get a much better sense of the editing approach to take, specifically in what particular threads or themes we want to emphasize as we put this thing together.

As Roberto had to come into Siena he was kind enough to drop us off. Before we said arrivaderci he asked if we would like to join him and Patti on Tuesday in scouting out a couple of possible new locations for their tours. We said YEAH and later Patti sent us a text message saying they would pick us up at the Porta Romana gate (about a 10 minute walk for us) at 9 am.