Brett and Bernii

We caught the train from Munich to Bologna in northern Italy on Friday 18th of September, arriving at our apartment at about 5:00pm. We were staying a little outside of the old town at Appartamento vista San Luca con terrazza panoramica (AU$224.45/night). We caught the bus to the old town and had a few drinks before we had dinner at a really nice restaurant Tannino. It was a wine bar that specialised in bruschetta, and the service and food were excellent.

The following day we returned to the old town for some sightseeing and lunch at a popular restaurant. We were a bit disappointed with the food on this occasion, and we later returned to Tannino for some wine and bruschetta.

Bologna was a nice city, however there were a lot of tourists and tour groups, and the public transport was not very good. This would become a bit of a theme of our time in Italy.

After three days in Bologna, we caught the train to Siena. We checked into our hotel at Terme 53 (AU$223.21/night), and went to a few nearby bars. Siena was a very touristy medieval city in Tuscany, with large tour groups often blocking the narrow streets of the old town. Fortunately many were day trippers, so they left in the early evening. We found a few good bars and restaurants in Siena, including Du’ Cose da Berna and Osteria La Chiacchera.

After three nights in Siena, we caught the train to Montepulciano Stazione where we transferred to a bus for the trip to Montepulciano – another touristy hilltop village in Tuscany. We stayed at Casa Vittorio for three nights (AU$186.72/night). During our time there we drank some of the local wine and enjoyed some pistachio gelato. One of our favourite places was E Lucevan le Stelle, where we could watch the sunset with a bottle of wine.

On the Sunday morning, we checked out of our apartment and tried to call a taxi to take us to Montepulciano Stazione for our train back to Siena. All of the taxi drivers we spoke to or messaged were unavailable. To make things worse, there were no buses operating on Sunday. We then went to the Tourist Information centre where we were provided with another phone number for a taxi. The driver just repeated “not possible” and hung up the phone. The tourist information guide advised that there was a fair on in Montepulciano Stazione and so the taxi drivers were avoiding the area due to the traffic. We had about two and a half hours before our train departed, and no transportation to the train station, so we decided to walk. I carried both of our larger backpacks (about 20kg in total), and Bernii carried our smaller bags. It was about 9km along windy roads with little or no pathway. We arrived at the train station about two hours later to find only one street closed for the fair, and no traffic issues. 😠

We finally arrived back in Siena and checked into our next accommodation, Fontebranda Nest (AU$161.37/night). We spent the next three days resting and revisiting some of our favourite bars and restaurants in Siena. Bernii also visited the Duomo di Siena, the impressive cathedral made of stacked black and white marble.

On our final day in Siena, we caught the bus to another touristy Tuscan hilltop village, San Gimignano, where we spent a few hours walking the medieval streets and had pizza and wine for lunch, before returning to Siena.

On Wednesday 30th of September, we caught the train to Turin where we spent the night at Hotel Bologna (AU$129.35/night). We found a really cool bar, Amarillo Wild Pub, which had two beers for the price of one, so we had a few drinks there. The following morning we made our way to the bus station to catch a Flixbux to Lyon in France.

We found that most places that we visited in Italy were full of tourists, with many being from the USA. Turin was the only exception, and it made me wish that we had spent a few more days there, instead of using it as a layover on our way to France. Most of the pasta that we had in Italy was very good, and the wines were nice, however the large numbers of tourists detracted from the experience. We are looking forward to spending some time in larger cities in France where we can escape more from the tour groups.