Lunch in Sienna

Today we planned to be a light day. We did not get up too early and our only goal was to drive to another hill town called Siena. Jane and I had watched a video about the town so we were excited to see the square in person. The square in Siena is the sight of an annual horse race where they clear out all the restaurant tables and fill the outer ring of the square with dirt for the race.

We arrived in time for a late lunch in the square. Rather than picking a more expensive restaurant somewhere in town we opted for sitting along the square and watching the people. It was fun, although the lunch was not all that exciting. Jane and I had Lasagne al Forno and Josh and Kaia each had a Salami and Fontina Panini.

After lunch it started to rain, so we lost our desire to wander around the hill towns of Tuscany. We wandered by a few shops on our way out of town but our hearts just were not in the shopping or sight seeing today.

We headed for our apartment hoping that maybe the weather there had been better. Unfortunately the puddles and gutters of rain told us differently. So we stayed around the apartment and read, Josh tried a Sudoku, then got Kaia to play Cribbage with him.

While we were waiting around, the gardener showed up with some Italian guy that we can only guess was the plumber, come to fix the hot water heater. neither of them spoke any english so there was really nothing to do but show them to the bathroom and see what happened. They left abut 10 minutes later, and miraculously the water heater seems to work 100% better.

For dinner tonight we wanted to try Casa Masi again. We arrived at a little before 7:30 but it was full so we made a reservation for friday night. We decided to give Il Lago a try. Il Lago means the lake and Il Lago was a restaurant built around a small lake. We quickly realized that this was not so much a restaurant as it was a place to hold a wedding and wedding reception if you come to Tuscany for that sort of thing. We were seated in a large glassed in room with many tables and only one overworked italian grandmother to wait on us.

Dinner was mostly forgettable. Kaia only ordered tagliatelli basilica which was pretty good. Josh ordered a steak, Jane ordered Gnudi, which was good, and misto of rabbit, chicken, lamb and vegetables. It all came deep fried which made it hard to figure out what was what. I ordered crostini to start followed by tagliatelli with mushroom pan sauce followed by steak. By the time I got my steak everyone else had finished all their courses. Maybe the best thing we had was an order of pommes frittes which we saw another table order. Thinking they would be good with steak I asked for some but they came before I even got my pasta so they were long gone by the time my steak showed up. We arrived home at 10:00 tired and ready for a day of hiking tomorrow.