I made a new discovery in Italy: I named my dog after an Italian town and didn't even know it. Name notwithstanding, I fell in love with Siena, a charming Tuscan hill town.
When we heard about it, we decided to take a day trip there from Florence. The bus ride to and fro was breathtaking and incited large amounts of jealousy of the people who actually get to live there. Just picture Cory or I going "Ooh! Ooh! Let's live there!" every time we passed a rustic villa.
Siena, like Florence, is a town where the art is everywhere, but is perhaps hardest to miss in its cathedral. Walking inside make me feel like I was transported to the middle of an Escher picture (you know that one with the birds in the four corners and the night sky? Another World? Yeah, that one). The interior was dark and incredibly gothic, but felt like it was on such a massive scale that it was easy to miss the huge array of works by the greats because your head was at a permanent 60 degree angle.
I was fascinated by the pillars used in the construction. In this day, the striped marble just seemed so frivolous for a religion as severe as medieval Catholicism. Incongruous? Certainly. Photogenic? Absolutely!
This photo is from our honeymoon. If you'd like large resolution, enlargement-quality copies of any of the files you see from our adventures in Italy, please leave a comment and let me know.