Siena – obsessive and pensive, a city of steep and narrow streets, always climbing or descending. The red of the Piazza del Campo appearing dazzling and suddenly evokes a sense of excitement. The Piazza, its atypical circumference at times a course to racing horses, is most commonly the assemblage of milling soles upon its decorative surface.

Enclosed within its walls, which ancient administrators had erected hundreds of years before it became common practice, are row upon row of conjoined medieval structures, closely sequestered from their similitude across narrow paths.

The Duomo with its impressive exterior non-the-less elicits pain and gloom from within. Dark images on insensate walls and imposing black and white stripped columns emit a feel of joyless circustry.

In the evening natives and we who dream, wander the winding ways, the sounds of the artisans and spouting fountains penetrate the hum of shuffling feet. To pause where merchants harbor the most precious wines of Tuscany. A little Vino, a lofted bed in a medieval inn, and we reconcile the day.