Saluti

Another relaxing sunny day. We started slowly, doing some background research on places we’ve been and on some ideas for today, then walked over to where the farmers’ market was. Shame this isn’t here more days…lovely to look around and admire the fresh produce with delicious looking meats, cheeses and an abundance of fruit and veg. With hindsight we should have bought some artichokes for supper but didn’t want to carry them round all day and thought, having got the idea of them at the market, that we’d be able to pick them up somewhere else later (we couldn’t).
We then moved on to the Cateriniana Basilica de San Domenico which is a vast barn of a place, very sparsely decorated but with some very striking modern stained glass installed for the Pope’s visit in 1982. The building first opened in the 13th century and has suffered fires and all sorts of damage and occupation since, and been repaired and altered many times. It is most famous for housing reliquaries (the thumb and head) of St Catherine, who we learnt about later since once again there was very little information to be had in the church itself. She was a remarkable young woman who worked closely with two Popes, acting as an envoy from them to various men in power in order to negotiate peace and influence their actions. She wrote and published many letters and treatises and apparently influenced Italian literature and culture, and died young as a result of her extreme fasting. Very strange and unsettling to have her head on display and for all the people crowding around the chapel dedicated to her staring at her head staring back at them.
We wandered through the town towards the restaurant we’d booked earlier in the week for our typical Tuscan lunch and quickly settled to ordering…we opted for sharing some appetisers and primi piatti…..we choose a burrata stuffed with panzanella salad (chopped very small) with tomato gel, some ribollata soup and some pici pasta with wild boar ragu. All very delicious and filling, then we shared a house tiramisu for desert which was gorgeous and topped with crushed hazelnut praline.
We explored the ancient wine cave at the back of the restaurant and then walked down to Il Campo and relaxed in the sun on the warm terracotta tiled slope….i explained how to lock in the atmosphere of the moment to a memory bank for later use on days when you need to be uplifted, then we did a little shopping, LE on the hunt for some paper goods and a University of Siena baseball cap (no luck on the latter). After a while we decided we actually needed a bit of a rest so went back to the flat and read for an hour or so then, refreshed, headed back out to get some drinks in the sun. We worked out how to get onto a little tiny terrace overlooking Il Campo that we’d noticed before and enjoyed a delicious cocktail each of tequila, grapefruit juice and lime soda that they called a Paloma. Chatting about various mutual colleagues, team dynamics and handling change as we soaked up the last of the sun and our last evening here.
We came home to another supper of ham, cheeses, salad etc and talked about the strange elongation of time on holidays and all the things we’ve seen and done…it’s been a lovely week