Continued from Siena 2026 Day 2 Part 1.

I wonder how you get to that other view point between us and the duomo? Either way, noticed that they construct a lot of their buildings like they did in Morocco, with a lot of holes in the wall and what I assume holes left over from scaffolding.

I love vantage points, RL says I’m the only one who appreciates them. She said she likes them when you can see greenery from viewpoint. I see greenery beyond the city! She actually liked this one quite a bit.

Look babe, more greenery! Tuscany does look like what I think it should look like.

Time to head down, and two of the kids and I took the elevator this time, RL and one of the kids took the stairs. It’s got two doors, except instead of being opposite one another, they are on two adjacent sides 90 degrees apart. Don’t think I’ve seen this type before. And not only that, one door slides open, and one folds open.

I want one of these doors in my house.

Now looking for lunch.

I think this is the spot for lunch I found on my phone…maybe.

We sat down, it’s hot, and this doesn’t feel right…I don’t think this is the spot I had picked out. It feels too touristy on the main road, I don’t think this is the place.

Walked around the corner, looked down the hill, there’s the restaurant that I thought we were going to. No one had greeted us at the other restaurant yet, so we just all got up and moved.

The entrance to the restaurant we are eating at. It’s a little hidden.

Yes, this is much more like it.

It’s like we are eating inside a cellar, and the best part, they’ve got the AC blowing COLD.

Beef tartare for RL.

Oh look, anchovies! That’ll be mine.

The kids have discovered that they really like honey with their cheese. I do like the honey here in Italy. It taste much more mild than the honey back in Texas I think.

Pork cheek. I’m glad we made the decision to leave that other restaurant and come here. This place is delicious and the atmosphere is 10x better.

Yum, that’s a good lunch. Time to head back home, for me at least. RL wanted to visit some of the shops up here and the kids wanted to go with her. Fine by me.

Run down the hill!

I took the nap, the kids got on their iPads.

RL took a stroll in Siena by herself and it rained again this afternoon.

RL visits the main square, Piazza del Campo, where they are setting up for the Palio next week. They’ve had it fenced off while they are laying down and compact the dirt for the track.

After RL did get recon mission, it’s time for dinner. I want to visit the main piazza, it’s a shame that it’s fenced off and we can only look and not go walking around in it though. The plan is to go to a grocery store and buy some food to eat back at home.

The kids have so much energy, they are just bouncing off the walls. We told them that they’ll need to climb the stairs while the adults take the escalators so they can work off some of their excess energy.

No Pizza at this restaurant, apparently. But seriously, if you see pizza, the restaurant has a much higher chance of being a tourist trap since I don’t think pizza is really a traditionally regional food here.

Found an entrance to the main piazza where we can take a peek at what it looks like.

Wait a minute, can we go inside now? It seems like since RL visited an hour or two ago, they’ve since completed putting down the track and we are allowed to go into the main square. Awesome.

This is quite nice, we are some of the first people here so it’s nice and empty. Love the relatively thin tourist crowds here in Siena.

The kids are always messing around and it’s hard to get a good photo.

I feel bad for all the restaurants that line the piazza, they can’t open up and have customers while this is happening.

Or can they? As if on queue, all at the same time, all the restaurants started bringing out tables and chairs out onto the track where the horses will race and began to set up seats. I guess they are open for business after all.

The kids really enjoyed running around the piazza. They said they haven’t had much room to run around wild in a while, and they started playing tag.

The clock is wrong, and it’s also dinner time.

The typical free flowing water fountains that you see at places in Italy.

Alright kids, let’s go get some food before it’s too late. They asked to come back here again tomorrow so they can run around again, ok, we can do that.

Found the grocery store.

This will do just fine for us.

People just come in and buy giant slices of ham.

I don’t know why I found this fascinating, it’s a full grown tree. There’s not too much of these in the middle of Siena.

We promised the kids gelato. I know it’s before dinner, but since we don’t have a gelato place close by our Airbnb, we’ll eat gelatos first, then dinner second. No one complained.

Italians use a lot of nuts, we’ve gotta be extra careful for PL with her nut allergies.

Look at how narrow that garage is! A Smart car can barely fit. And much to my surprise, they have cars driving up here in these narrow roads up here. I do think it’s a traffic restricted area though, so there isn’t too many cars so that’s good.

Let’s head down and eat some dinner at home.

Brought these laundry pods from UK to Paris and now here. Let’s keep using them up.

Dinner, looks pretty good and healthy.

Along with our rustic Italian loaf of bread.

Wholesome family dinner time with Naruto on the laptop. The TV doesn’t have airplay, so we’ll have to make do with the small screen.

There’s a washing machine, but no dryer. Going old school and hang dry here.

To be continued at Siena 2026 Day 3.