Day 13 – June 1, 2025 – Siena to Foiana della Chiana, Italy – DISCLAIMER – I used ChatGPT for some of the picture comments to help remind me of what we saw.
Today we leave for our villa and I’m excited about it! We finished up all the packing, ate good breakfast and headed out the door about 10:45 am. Duccio, our host, let us keep our bags in the room since his next guests were not due until after he needed to take us to the train station. We basically roamed around the streets killing time until we could find a place to eat lunch.
One of the Contrada, the dolphin, was doing their parade today so we saw them all over. They were dressed in their traditional garb and the drummers were drumming their tunes. There were more than I expected plus they had a huge following. Apparently, they go to each Contrada’s home base, which is usually one of the churches within the districts so these parades can last up to two hours!
We found a little spot to eat not far from the BNB and decided on a ham and mushroom pizza for lunch. It was good, but John was still hungry so ordered some lasagna. I took a couple of bites, but it was too rich for me. The one he had yesterday for lunch was much better plus it more of a meat sauce to it and this one was more cheese and cream based. We ended up striking up a conversation with the family beside us that were from Ohio, near Columbus.
We killed enough time with lunch and then headed to the BNB where Duccio met up with us. We got our bags, loaded the car and took off for the train station. It worked out well that his next set of guests basically were coming in right when he dropped us off. We had to wait about 40 minutes before Steve and Patty’s train came in, but we found a nice shady spot and hung out.
Their train came in about 3:40 pm and John had already noticed our driver, Barbara, was there waiting for us as well. It is about a 40 minute drive from Siena to the villa so we chatted and caught up on news while looking at the beautiful countryside. We made it to the villa, La Lisa, and was greeted by our host, Lorenzo. Lorenzo does not speak English so Google translate was used a lot, lol! Barbara had one of her colleagues bring our rental car so we were all set.
The villa has a total of five different apartments, with three of the five having two bedrooms and a bath, except for “Lea” (all of them are named) which has two bedrooms and two baths. John and I chose that apartment as it also has a great balcony to sit on in the morning with your coffee as well as in the evening with your wine. While there are some newer things in the apartments, the buildings are old, so it is not a “high end” place, but the views are fantanstic and it meets our needs. The pool is amazing and is also heated, though not needed now as the temps are starting to creep up.
When Lorenzo finished “talking” with John about a lot of things, we made a quick grocery trip to get the essentials. We decided to get a few premade things so we could eat dinner, so we found some stuffed ravioli, a ragu of some sorts, carrots, bread, and cheese. Oh, and wine of course, lol! A great first meal at the villa! Sorry forgot pictures!!!!!
We decided to call it an early night, we unpacked, both took showers then headed to bed. We have nothing planned tomorrow which will allow us to get caught up on laundry. I plan to try out the pool as well! Ciao!
