Dinner in Siena

Ok. So it is apparent to me now that I fell in love with Rome too quickly. I am like Romeo and Rosaline before he has met his Juliet. And like Romeo and Juliet, Siena and I had too little time together. I love Siena. Jason and I have decided we are moving there as soon as we can afford to buy a house. (Don't worry mom and dad, that means we are never moving there). =) But it was wonderful and we ended up staying today and shopping and walking around before heading to Florence. I had a list of things to do today in Florence, but we decided we needed to give Siena some more attention before leaving so soon.

And now, the best part. Dinner.

We had the best dinner so far last night. I had heard of this place in a guide book and so we decided to try it out. Oh man. It was beyond delicious. To start with I had a ravioli filled with radicchio and scamorza in a butter and leek sauce and Jason had bacon and cheese wrapped in an egg noodle. In Italy that is just like a first course unless you have an antipasti first, but I cannot eat all four courses in an Italian meal. Anyway, for our main course I had this sirloin topped off with some sort of lettuce and a few tomatoes. I would never have thought to put lettuce on top of steak, but the Tuscans KNOW what they are doing because it was like this perfect pairing of simple ingredients. Jason had a filet of beef that was so good and salty it was almost like a very fine jerky, but that description really doesn't do it justice.

To go with dinner we also got a bottle of this Brunello wine. I have been reading Under the Tuscan Sun (which by the way is NOTHING like the movie) while we are here and yesterday on the way to Siena I was reading it as we were litereally passing through all the towns she was talking about. Brunello is a Tuscan wine (I think) that she talks about in the book as their favorite thing to have and I kept seeing signs for tours to see wineries of it and such. So we HAD to have some. We asked our waiter and he started talking about the different years and which he thought was the best so we took a 1993. Ok, picture this. He comes out with a tray with the bottle of wine covered in dust. Two big red wine glasses. One small glass pitcher and a candle stick with a red candle that was dripping wax. He wipes off the bottle, opens it and pours about an ounce in to one of the wine glasses. He swirls it then pours it in to the other red wine glass. Swirls it again then pours it in to the pitcher. Then he smells it to make sure jit smells ok. THEN he pours us a glass of wine. This is a serious business this fine wine stuff.

So anyway, dinner was delicious then we walked back through the piazza after dark where people were lingering over their dinners and espressos and then went back to our hotel. Today we shopped and bought a bunch of stuff and then we headed to Florence. Our hotel here is another Sheraton, gotten for free on Starwood points!, and our room is HUGE. Even big compared to American rooms. Also, we are convinced that queen beds here are like between the size of Queen and King. The rooms are queen beds, but they seem way bigger. Anyway, just a random observation.

So we are about to turn in for the night and tomorrow we have a LOT to see in Florence. Will update everyone later and I will talk to you later!!!