We arrived in Siena in the mid afternoon and tried to find a taxi to our apartment… After waiting and waiting, I decided to check the directions to get to the hostel, which said it was just a 3km walk from the train station. We began walking… and walking… aimlessly through the streets, trudging along with our very heavy bags (sending another box home soon!). Eventually we asked directions and were given a map, though it wasn’t a very good map, and almost ready to collapse from exhaustion we eventually came to a hotel, not ours, and asked them to call us a taxi. 1 minute later it arrived and we were taken to our hostel. Though pedestrians seem to roam the streets here, occasionally letting cars through, but in general, not really noticing the taxi coming down the street so would continue their conversations in the middle of the street. The cab driver seemed unfazed by this, did not beep, did not yell at them to move, just continued to slowly inch around each group of people on the way… we were very confused by this… so Sara began yelling at people on the drivers behalf… which had no effect at all. Eventually we rolled up to our hostel, checked in and were shown to our room… up seven flights of stairs! Thankfully the owner offered to carry my bag upstairs… Sara left hers in the foyer, in hopes the owner would carry hers too.. which he did later on. When checking in the owner had informed us that there was a double bed, but that if we wished we could have a fold out also. Sara said that would be good thankyou, and as she turned to tell me this I jumped in and called dibs on the double bed as I had overheard the conversation… her face was priceless.
So the owner showed us our apartment and began unfolding the spare bed… in the kitchen. My first thought was “but… that’s in a separate room, where will I sleep?… where will Sara sleep? Surely he doesn’t expect us to have separate rooms!”... So I decided like it or lump it I would be in the double bed. When the owner left Sara turned to me with a puzzled look on her face and said “separate rooms?!?” so we both agreed it was best to share the double, as we are unsure how to do anything separately anymore… Another confusing fact of our apartment is that it has a kitchen, in a separate room to the bedroom, and a bathroom down the hall… but hang on… don’t showers go inside the bedroom?? We were very confused to finally have a tiny apartment all to ourselves, all for the price of a hostel. Elated, with our good fortune, we went straight to the bedroom and crashed out for a four hour nap… moving day is exhausting! Luckily, Sara and I are so used to each other that we can fall asleep, stick to our own side, and not touch or breathe on the other at all during the night.
Now refreshed, we decided to go check out the town. We went and found some dinner in the main square and wandered through a few streets before coming back to our apartment for an early night.
The next day we set off for the 11am walking tour… though every street here seems to lead back to the main square, and after continuously getting lost in the circular streets we eventually figured out that if you want to go left you have to turn right, and vice versa…. Kind of like Canberra. However, this meant that we missed the 11am tour and made it just in time for the 1pm tour. We met our guide and were given lanyards with a speaker box that we plugged headphones into. The guide had a microphone on that was meant to patch through to us… however, ours did not work. When we tried to question this at the beginning of the tour, the guide said “well everyone else's is working, I have to start the tour” and left us with the office lady to try different headphone sets, none of which worked. So we ran to catch up with the now walking away guide to try and listen without the microphone. When we finally caught up, she was halfway through telling us the first story… in Spanish. Confused, I turned to Sara and was informed that this tour was bi-lingual and the guide would be telling each story in Spanish, and then repeat herself in English… are you kidding me?! So we decided to press on, and tried to keep at the front of the group to hear the guide, though in a group of 40 tourists, walking down an already busy street, it’s hard to keep in earshot of the guide. So we missed the next story she told along the way to our second stop…
At this point we were not coping. Sara stopped the guide and apologised but said that we could not continue with this tour for 2 hours. Not only could we not hear the guide, but the constant changing between languages was frustrating and confusing, and all for the privilege of 20 euro! We have not spent that much on a single walking tour, and every other tour has been informative, entertaining and in English for the entire 3 hours, as opposed to half a 2 hour tour spoken in another language. Surely, for that price they could split the tour up between two guides, each in separate languages, or possibly offer an 11am Spanish, and 1pm English tour. She politely stopped the tour for a moment to let us know she could not give us our money back but tried to call her office to send someone out to meet us. We apologised to the group for interrupting but were informed by the rest of the group that they could also not hear a word. Their headphones were working, but when the guide spoke while walking, the wind caught the microphone so everything was muffled, and others just heard static.
Amazingly though, when the others said they couldn’t hear, it wasn’t in the tone of “well, this isn’t right, perhaps we should all get our money back” it was more of a “why are you whinging, none of us can hear either” tone… umm I’m sorry, what are you paying for then?? If you just want a nice stroll in the sun with a group of people in your way, you could do that on your own… So we continued the tour while we waited for the office lady to find us, this time with the guide talking at a higher volume, and turned off the microphone as 25 people had raised their hand to say they had not heard anything so far… though when she explained in Spanish why she was turning off the microphone, many people looked relieved and concurred with each other that they also could not hear.
So after hearing every second word for the next story, the office lady finally arrived and tried to give Sara and I another headset… we stated that even if we could hear, the use of two languages was too confusing, and a waste of our time when half the tour is spent looking at something shiny, and therefore we would get less information than we had expected of a 2 hour tour, and asked for our money back. She replied “I can’t do that” and walked away to the next complainer to try and change their headset… mind you she only brought 3 new headsets for the 30 people that could not hear… Stunned at her response, we interrupted her again and informed her that we would get our money back, considering we had complained 1 minute into the tour and we had never experienced such a poorly organised tour. After a few stammers and “but, uh, I don’t have authority, but hmm” she decided we were not going away, and handed back our money.
Now very frustrated, but pleased that the torture was over, we decided to go to the tourist office to check if the tour we had booked for the following day would be run the same way. We were informed that our 5 hour tour of the local wineries, churches and castles in the surrounding area, was not only run by the same tour company, but would be run once again with a bi-lingual guide. We politely asked the staff member to cancel our booking, and asked if there were any other tours that were in one language, which there are not, and were looked at like this was an odd request. We also found out that all tours in Siena are dominated by the one company. Disgusted that we were now stuck with no one to give us any interesting facts or history of the city, the staff member suggested a private tour, which would cost around 150 euro…each. We politely declined and walked out scratching our heads…
We then decided to go look at the cathedral, lined up to get tickets and bought a 5 attraction pass. We spent the rest of the day wandering through the cathedral, museum, baptistery, crypt and an art gallery. While the cathedral was detailed and impressive, it was not a very pretty cathedral, though it seems nothing can compare to Segrada Famiglia in Barcelona. We were left wondering what we were missing… Siena was not living up to the Italia we had grown accustomed to loving. That night we made good use of our kitchen in our apartment and cooked our dinner.
This morning, I made breakfast in the apartment before setting off to the markets. There are stalls set up all around an old fort. We trawled through the stalls, which were haphazardly arranged and not in straight lines, which was very displeasing to us as Sara and I like order and didn’t want to miss any of the shops. Next we headed inside the fort… amazingly there was no entry fee, though… upon entering we realised why, as there was nothing to see there but some old walls surrounding and unkempt garden. It was now beginning to rain so we began heading back to the main square, though 5 minutes later the rain stopped and the sun came out, so we wandered through some more back streets before getting some groceries to make tonight’s dinner… which was yum, even if I do say so myself…
Tomorrow night we will get an overnight bus to Naples. We will spend one night there before Mum joins us… we will continue through a few Italian cities before meeting Dad in Greece a week later… So if I don’t post for a while, I’m either having too much fun… or one of us has not survived… wish us luck!
No comments:
Post a Comment