Mediterranean 4: San Gimignano and Volterra

On Thursday, June 15, our ship stopped in Livorno, Italy, which is kind of close to Pisa, so most people went to Pisa and Florence that day. But seeing as how we did those last year, we instead rented a car and drove like crazy Italians to the hill town of San Gimignano (sahn jee-mee-NYA-no), which I had heard was “very nice” both online and from an Italian dude at work, and confirmed by an Italian couple I met in Boston.

We had to drive on narrow, winding roads in the mountain, and it was exhilarating. 

The countryside got more and more beautiful as we got up into the mountains where the vineyards were.

We could see the towers of San Gimignano silhouetted against the sky as we approached.

Once we parked and entered the medieval wall of the city, we went into a church there (Chiesa di Sant'Agostino) to have a look around. It is a 13th century building with frescoes behind the altar showing the life of St. Augustine.

I liked the peaceful courtyard of the church.

Once again, we were greeted by lots of adorable narrow streets, some with little arches.

It happened to be market day on Thursdays, so we enjoyed shopping a bit there.

San Gimignano still has 15 of its original 72 original towers (torres). They were used by rich merchants to hide out when the city got sacked so that they were safe until the bad guys gave up and went away.

I thought the drain pipes looked so random. It seems like things just got built one at a time as they needed them, with no particular plan to begin with.

At one viewpoint we could look over a villa and the countryside.

It was a warm day, and we stumbled across “The Best Ice Cream in the World,” so of course I had to give it a go.

We came across a guy playing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (Bach) on crystal wine glasses. I remember playing a couple of notes on crystal glasses when I was a kid, so I was fascinated to see someone do such a good job on it. The guy was very nice and said that his website had instructions on how to create the instrument.

Here is a video of him playing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (starting partway into it). It goes for quite a while, so just watch as long as you'd like.

There was a little museum that had a scale model of what San Gimignano looked like in 1300. I love little models like that, so that made me happy.

Here is what the courtyard of the above-mentioned church looked like back in the day.



And it was interesting to see a cutaway view of what the inside of the towers looked like.

There was a viewpoint from the top of the old fortress (called La Rocca) that provided a spectacular view.

We asked a guy to take our picture, and he turned out to be a professional photographer, so that was a bonus. He got a picture of us with some of the towers.

As we exited La Rocca, we passed through a doorway with a shady vine thingy above it, and the breeze blasted through that doorway, making it an amazingly refreshing spot to stand.

Volterra

At that point, we were running low on time, but we decided to also hit the town of Volterra anyway, since it was only 30 minutes further, even though we would only have 20 minutes there. (You may recall that Volterra is where the vampire ruling body lives, according to Twilight.)

It, too, was a cute medieval town with red roofs and towers, and wonderful narrow streets.

Volterra, Italy

We came across a baptistery there, which had a cool statue of John the Baptist in the middle.

Volterra Baptistery of San Giovanni, featuring St. John the Baptist.

And I liked this view of the old buildings, with a little garden in the middle, indicating that even though this town is cute and old, people still live there and grow stuff and life goes on.

It was a very quick visit to Volterra, which hardly did it justice. All we had time for was to see the overlook, pop into that baptistry, run up and down some cute streets, and grab a gelato. (One must keep one's priorities straight, after all.)

The drive home was a little nerve-racking, because we were cutting it just a little close, and there was a big bus in front of us on this little twisty mountain road, and several cars right on my tail. I eventually passed it (though we could just as easily have gotten creamed and died), and we were able to turn our rental car in and catch our shuttle to the ship with 10 minutes to spare.

Then as we rode along in the shuttle I realized I had left my camera in the back seat of the rental car! So I grabbed a taxi that was dropping some people at the ship and he ran me back to the rental car place. He even called ahead and the rental car place said they would be willing to drive the camera to me at the ship, but I was already on my way. I paid the taxi 15€, which was well worth it to get my camera back with all my pictures.

That night dinner was timed such that we could watch the sunset from the deck, which was beautiful.

Next up, France!