The Sunday Traveler~Italy, Part 9; Liguria and Siena

The Sunday Traveler travels down memory lane with these posts from 2002 when Italy was on my agenda. Today will highlight briefly both Santa Margherita Ligure, an Italian port in the region of Liguria. This day provided a brief visit here before we moved on, and I’ll highlight both Liguria and Siena.

If memory serves me correctly (highly questionable), we visited both Portofino and Liguria this day, but I can’t be sure. At any rate, they both provided wonderful views and vibes of lovely little ancient towns on the waters of the Riviera di Levante.

It was good to see a little bit of the street life and architecture in this little town before moving on.  And now we’ll move on to the street scenes of Siena.

I loved wandering the streets wherever we might be on any given day

These streets with medieval brick buildings going back to its founding in 1240. 1240!

The Cathedral of Siena

I did go inside the church here in Siena, as I did not in Portofino. The interior of the churches I did visit were incredible times of awe at the architecture and art.

The statue depicting the story of the beginning of Siena, the Capitoline Wolf; according to legend Siena was founded by Senius and Aschius, two sons of Remus. The historic Palio, a horse race that goes round and round the historic center of Siena is usually held here twice a year. The photo I have of the Palazzo Pubblico will not download, but this is where the Palio takes place, and it is amazing to imagine horses racing around this small town center square.

And this brings me with one more episode left to bring you next week, our final destination on this trip that put us in Venice to say goodbye to Italy. Until then, I’ll say ciao with a little look back at one more scene from Portofino; you’ll notice I was focused on the gelateria…everywhere I went.