Wedding Blog

This is the final part in our series that Mr. Canary has been graciously writing about our Italian honeymoon. Mrs. Canary promises not to be a bad blogger and finish up the rest of the wedding recaps ASAP!

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Days 9-11: Siena

It didn’t take long after arriving in Siena to understand what people mean when they describe the city’s “cool”. It is not a large city by any means, but substantial enough to field one of the most beautiful epicenters in the entire country—the main square, Il Campo, bowed in the middle and shaped like a clamshell—a sizeable collection of art and architecture destinations, and an easygoing, assured vibe that makes Florence, its longtime rival, seem hectic and tourist-saturated by comparison. (One of our guidebooks even goes so far as to recommend visitors to Tuscany to stay in Siena and do Florence and its treasure trove of attractions as a day trip—which, all told, is a great idea.)

There were tourists in Siena, sure, but the whole placed seemed manageable—extremely walkable, beautiful mountain vistas in all directions, skinny streets and ancient buildings, a stunning Duomo, and lots of terrific shops and eateries. We were confident, almost the second we arrived, that we’d picked an ideal location for what one of our travel contacts described as the “glorious stagnation phase”—i.e. where we’d go to mellow out for a few days and not do too much after nearly a week of intensive biking and the absorption of many locations in a tight span.

We stayed three nights at Pensione Palazzo Ravizza (too opulent and classy for what typically passes for a “pensione” in most Italian cities), and although they choked on one planned surprise—I’d asked for a bottle of champagne to be left in the room to greet us on our arrival; we’d already gotten to the room and then I had to surreptitiously remind an attendant to bring it in—the wonderful staff was relentlessly kind, upbeat, cheery and helpful, even knocking some off the bill for a rooming mistake that was actually a travel agent’s error, and not their fault at all. A classy place, and while most hotels didn’t warrant extensive mention beyond some cursory delights or shortcomings—the luxury at Cortona’s Villa, for example, or, conversely, the shabby room at our flustered opening night in Bologna—Palazzo Ravizza brought us two unexpected surprises beyond already A-level service.

Our first night there, the hotel staff suggested a family-style trattoria, Papei, that ended up being one of the best restaurants of our entire trip—and wasn’t mentioned in any of our guidebooks or reference materials. Second, on the day we left, Mrs. Canary in the hotel lobby came across a display-case copy of a famous book called “Siena en Bianco e Nero,” a collection of black and white photographs of Siena scenes accompanied by journalistic reminisces, and these days largely out of print. Having that day trolled most of the city’s book stores in search of a sale copy and having come up short, we asked the staff at the Palazzo for help. Not only did they help us, but the front desk manager was also kind enough to retrieve the display copy from its lobby case—and sell it to us, tax-free, when we returned to dress for dinner. (Long story short, if you’re ever in Siena, look these Ravizza folks up and expect kind treatment with steady—and sturdy—service.)

Torta Della Nonna– if anyone has a good recipe for this, please pass it along! Mrs. Canary and I are going through major withdrawal.

Papei the trattoria yielded another piece of good fortune—it was the first restaurant we’d been to that had our much-sought-after Torta della Nonna (”Grandmother’s Cake”) on the dessert menu, and it was as good a representative example as we could have hoped for. It’s basically a double-crust tart filled with pastry cream, flavored with vanilla, lemon, pine nuts and ricotta cheese. We split a slice the first night, but then after finding the Torta in other pastry counters in Siena we stuck to getting our own slices. Sharing desserts between people who like sweets is clearly absurd. Especially on vacation.

The view from the top of the Duomo.

The X-factor in our Siena stretch was the extra day; for every city thus far, there had been the feel-things-out experience of an opening night followed by a full day of tourist sites, biking, and eating, and then having to depart just as we were getting used to our surroundings. By our third day (second full day) in Siena, we’d done most of the key museum attractions—the wondrous Duomo, the small but informative Duomo Museum (where Duccio’s Maesta and several Donatello masterworks are housed), the statelier Civic Museum and its enormous frescoes—and had a lot of fun scaling two heights, including the unfinished Duomo expansion tower atop the Duomo Museum and the claustrophobic 400 steps of the City Tower, which overlooks Il Campo. We were up early both days and so were able to arrive at the Duomo Museum and the City Tower right at their 9 AM opening bells—meaning a solid hour in each attraction with the quiet of only a few fellow visitors, some yawning guards, and bottleneck-free quality time with the masterpieces each location had.

Mrs. Canary at the top of the Il Campo tower.

By then, we’d also fully absorbed Siena’s easy rhythm; it says something about the city that its liveliest draws were protracted coffee dates and long, leisurely gelato strolls down the passegio. Late afternoons bled into slow, deliberate evenings spent walking, talking and laughing through medieval backdrops, and from there went to lengthy dinners that were a break from the forced, exhausted conversation of the bike tour meals and more laid-back, lingering events. There was time to soak it all in, in other words. Italy is tough because there’s so much to see, savor and experience—a trip over there to see just one or two cities seems like a missed opportunity to see even more. But after our Siena respite, we felt like we knew that city—a deep and more ingrained experience as opposed to the panoramic blur of everything else we’d seen. Two different modes, and we were pleased to experience both.

Day 12: Florence and Milan

A dawn train ride to Florence—where we’d lay over for about four hours en route back to Milan—was an offbeat treat unto itself: a ride with schoolkids and workadays on their morning commute to various nondescript towns in the Siena-to-Florence corridor. Florence itself was, surprisingly, not so engrossing; save for a morning pilgrimage to Mercato Centrale, San Lorenzo—and prosciutto, pecorino and mushroom sandwiches for breakfast—we weren’t so much re-charmed by being in Florence as nonplussed, enjoying our return visits past the duomo, over the Ponte Vecchio and brushing up against some of the major sites, but more hassled by the overwhelming crush of tourists than excited about being back. (We did photograph ourselves rubbing the famous “Il Porcellino” Florentine pig’s snout for good luck—can’t be total sticks in the mud, right?)

The Mercato Centrale where Mrs. Canary and I had breakfast.

After one more brush with prickly service at the Florence train station—itself a shell game of changing tracks and inconsistent arrivals, and this time the joy of three different station agents and three different opinions on whether we could change our train reservations to an earlier time—we enjoyed good conversation with a portly Texan couple whose hasty arrival to their seats—confused, exhausted and loud—was reminiscent of our own last-minute train adventure a week earlier in Bologna.

We had one final treat waiting for us in Milan: a night at Teatro Alla Scala, the famed opera house, and a performance by the Mexican tenor Ramon Vargas that left both Mrs. Canary and me suitably spellbound. Vargas offered up an 90-minute long, eight-piece program consisting of Italian and German standards for the first half, and an all-Spanish language second half, explaining after intermission it was in tribute to his father, the anniversary of whose death was also that evening. The audience—impressively sold out for an off-season event on a Monday night—was stingy with its standing ovations but enough to bring Vargas out for no less than four encores, each more mellifluous than the next.

The opera house itself was as advertised, for better and worse. While aesthetically astounding—long rows of burnished balcony and cozy viewing boxes, the entire place bedecked in red, swathed in history and opulence—it was sonically disappointing: not exactly listening to someone sing as if underwater, but not with the combination all-enveloping power and mesmerizing acoustic nuance that one gets at, say, the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

But we enjoyed everything about the experience, right down to the programs—they cost 5 Euro, but were a lot nicer than what you typically receive at American performances, with more lengthy recital notes and translations, and the performers and date printed on both the front cover and spine. A nice keepsake.

And the following day, we bid sad farewell to Italia and started plotting when we’d be able to visit again.

Have any of you visited Italy? Any additional tips or suggestions for our next trip?

Previously in this series:

Notes on an Italian Adventure, Part One
Notes on an Italian Adventure, Part Two