More exploring and organising this week. I was thrilled that four weeks, five carriers and twelve SIM cards later, we all finally have Italian phone numbers!
We’ve also been succeeding in our missions to find good playgrounds around Siena. Audrey seemed pretty pleased with this one.
The weather forecast was pretty bad for most of the week so Mandi and I decided to make the most of a stunning day on Wednesday and head to Florence by ourselves.
After the hour-long drive I needed a coffee so we headed to the first cafe we found. Turns out we’d stumbled onto the most Sydney-style cafe in Tuscany (thankfully I’ve never seen avocado toast on a menu in Italy before).
After some wandering we headed to the bar at the top of the Westin and enjoyed the view (and an Aperol Spritz, of course).
Some more wandering and it was time for lunch. As we headed down one particularly busy pedestrian street, we noticed that everyone was there for the same (massive) sandwiches.
We decided '“when in Florence” and joined the line. It was worth the wait.
The next day we had to go look at houses to rent. Even though we love where we are now, we really want to have a place with a pool for the spring, so we headed into the Tuscan countryside in the rain.
We saw some amazing places with stunning views.
But we didn’t really find anything with the right combination of location, availability and price. On the way back we inadvertently found an outdoor sculpture garden - kind of a Tuscan ‘sculpture by the trees’ lining the road.
We’ll definitely have to head back in better weather to see it properly.
On Friday night we were invited out to our first dinner with a school family. They took us to a great (almost literal) hole in the wall in Siena.
After dinner the kids walked the dog.
And played in the Piazza.
On Saturday the kids went to their first school birthday party then on Sunday we headed to Pistoia, just over an hour north of Siena. We decided it was time for a bit of history, so the first thing we did was buy tickets to an underground tour of the city’s medieval waterways.
The tour was great, with the guide explaining how the waterways were used to transport goods in and out of the city (and in the 14th Century were accidentally used to spread the black plague from the infected garbage that was dumped into it).
After an hour underground, it was time to head up - climbing the four hundred steps to the top of the bell tower.
Looking out the arrow slits, tt was easy to imagine what it would have been like during one of the many attacks that devastated the city in the middle ages.
The sun was setting as we climbed higher - perfect photo time!
And then we were at the top.
After that we headed back to Siena to get ready for the week and cross our fingers that we get the snowfall that’s been predicted (for the first time since 2012!)