valentine's days past

I swear that I do do cool things in my life now . . . it's just that the last couple years had such better pictures.

So.  One year ago.  V-day.  I was recovering from a yucky break-up and my friend was itching to get out of town.  We hopped on a train and had the most wonderful layover in a little Italian town that had the best 15-year-old postcards of Leonard DiCaprio ever.  Why?  I do not know.   All I know is that one had a rainbow swirly pattern behind him; the other showed Leo in all his pimply teenage glory; and the other was supposed to be smoldering.  I bought them and eventually sent them to my sister and two friends.  With Vatican stamps.

So we got to Siena, got on the wrong bus, and got a scenic 1-hour tour of the surrounding countryside. Once we got back to town, we headed straight to Piazza del Campo, Sienna's gorgeous shell-shaped square.

This is the same piazza they fill up with sand and hold crazy horse races in during the summer.  The precursor to Nascar, if you will.

Fonte Gaia - the Joyful Fountain - graces the piazza and somehow doesn't get knocked over by the yearly horse mayhem.  Jacopo della Quercia's 1419 creation is now safely in a museum, but a pretty replica stands in its place.

What I love especially is Italian advertising.  See the awning.  "Restaurant.  To Eat."

Just in case you weren't sure.

Next stop: the Cathedral baptistry.  Ornate ceilings washed in blue, gilded arches and Biblical scenes aplenty - taking you back to the time when art made you bend your knee in awe.

Going through the Cathedral museum took us up and out to phenomenal views.  The Campo on high.

The Cathedral next door.

 

Which we then went to see.

We walked in to striped marble majesty and inlaid marble floors - the most wondrous floors you can imagine.  I thought that I had a love affair with the swirling colored mosiac Cosmotesque floors in Rome.  I had not yet experienced storybooks under my feet.

Moving around with head swept high and then turned low, we came across the pulpit - a massive work of stone hoisted on the form of beasts.

Next stop: food.  Only memories survive to record it, but it was amazing indeed.  First we scoured windows until we found crusty bread hot out of the oven with sausage and olives and other savory thingies within.  Then we discovered a restaurant that stayed open just for us, and I ate wild boar drowned in a warm goulashy sauce.  We also ordered a cheese sampler plate, and my friend didn't understand that it was a sampler.  So he ate an entire portion of the rindiest piece on there (he was trying to be nice) before I asked him what the heck he was doing.  We laughed and the rest of the cheese was good.

After filling up, we went up the hill to St. Catherine's house.  No pictures were allowed except for this one.  It was neat to put a visual with all the stories I grew up with as a child.  I always thought it was fascinating that she lived in a little cell for years in her own house and had food pushed through the door (heh, maybe I was a little too introverted as a kid).  I finally got to see it.

On the way up the hill to St. C's parish church, there was a patch of beauty growing in the frosty air.

Happy Valentine's day.

Then how to describe St. Catherine's church?  It is barren - I think it fell apart and was reconstructed at some point, because only in earthquake-ravaged Assisi have I seen a church so bare.  It has the ugliest stained glass windows I have ever seen and never want to see again.  They make E.T. look pretty.  I got this shot in before a Dominican yelled at me.

It's actually one of the nicer ones.  You should have seen what they did to poor Jesus.

The other sticking point about St. Catherine's church is that it has St. Catherine's head in it.  Only her head.  Her head used to be toted around in processions by the village people, and one time they started squabbling over it and they dropped it.  It used to be incorrupt, but now it just looks scary.  Joseph and I couldn't help making an exclamation that sounded something like "what the heck is that and what happened to it?" and then two French ladies yelled at us and then started muttering about youth in French.

But it WAS scary.  Almost as scary as her detached finger in the chapel next to it.  Flannery O'Connor has her theories about the grotesque and Catholicism. Siena kind of proves them.

Moving onwards, we wandered through the city . . .  

Freezing to death, but enjoying being out of Rome.

Oh, I almost forgot . . . I fully intend that my library will look like this someday:

Or I might just put a picture of this in it.

We eventually ended up in the bizzarest bar that proclaimed itself to be "An American Bar."  I'm sorry, but Americans do not put Paint-By-Number pictures of cobras and rainforests on its walls, or varnished giant fish, or pictures of themselves in yachts catching the giant varnished fish.  Nor do we usually have organs and massive fish tanks and tiny bathrooms that reek of bleach and are next to an open outside door in February.  But it was warm and had hot chocolate.  We loved you, little bar.

And that was Valentine's Day, one year ago.