Day 11: Sienna

The wheels fell off today.   We had the worst start to Sienna and the best evening all rolled into one.  Sienna is a walled city and I was convinced that we had parking in front of our apartment inside the city.  Its our first and only accommodation with Airbnb.  It will be our last also.  We arrived around midday and it was already 33 degrees.  We followed the navman into the city.  Just past the gate, a local on a vespar flagged us over and said we couldn't enter.  We waited til he disappeared and continued until we were very close to the centre.  Naughty but I was sure the add said parking.  The streets narrowed and Rick was starting to get a little stressed as we were dodging people and heading into the abyss.  We decided to pullover and call the host.  Her sister answered.  She spoke OK English but she told me we had to turn around immediately as we definitely didn't have parking in the city.  Hmmm.  Not happy Jan.  A kind man told us how to get out of the city which proved pretty easy.  We called her back and spent the next 10 minutes trying to understand where to park and how the hell we were going to find her.  She had no idea where we were and we couldn't find where she was telling us to go on the navman so things became pretty stressful in a hurry.  Rick must have been punching in the wrong address as finally I had a go, and up it came.  So again we headed off, this time it took us around the back of the city.  A few wrong turns and we finally found the parking lot which was charging a steep 2 euro per hour - we will be here for 3 days, so that's nearly $200 for us to park.  There was no mention of that on AirBnB.  Again not happy Jan.  So then came the trauma of trying to drag three kids and all the bags up escalators in the heat to our apartment.  First came a 500m walk up a step incline.  The ascent was ridiculous and I was really struggling to breathe. It was so not a good day to try out a new pair of shoes. My backs been really great, but i was loaded up like a donkey and could feel it starting to ache. Next came a series of escalators (about 10), that were a godsend but weren't wide enough for our bags so it was challenging trying to balance the bags on half the step standing on the step below and then trying to exit gracefully.  Needless to say, it didn't work on one of the occasions and I went flying over the top of the bag when we hit the ground level.  Not happy again Jan.  Then poor Zachie fell on the grate of an escalator and cut himself.  There were many tears shed.  When we got to the top, the sister came to meet us.  We pushed our bags up another cobblestone hill (joy) until we hit the apartment which was on the second floor.  No lift sorry. Stay the course Dianna, salvation is coming.  Or maybe not. There was no air conditioning and the apartment was stinking hot.  And of course it faced the afternoon sun, so it wasn't cooling down anytime soon.  Breathe mummy, you're a role model to these children and need to keep it together. We got the low down from the host, I grunted at the prospect of only one fan in the joint and we decided to seek refuge somewhere else for lunch.  And so began the next trauma of trying to find the Garbins in a restaurant that was about 600m away that we just couldn't find.  There were quite a few heated moments and tears in between.  So much for being a positive example.  We only found them when we stumbled upon Sandra and Catherine in a street.  I burst into tears again. They scooped us up and made everything better.  The lunch was much appreciated.  I had my first Vitello Tonnato and Rick had a seafood pasta.   Perspective was restored and I had my bearings by the end of the afternoon. The evening proved the highlight of the day.  There was a huge parade through the Ill Campo (the centre of town) to celebrate the entrants and winner of the famous medieval horse race held here recently.  It was fabulous and the kids just loved it.  I'm sure it will be something they'll remember for a long time to come.  It reminded me of the old Griffith Food and Wine Festival street parade complete with decorated floats.  They were throwing lollies and passing out wine.  It was really spectacular and colourful and medieval.  It was just magic and my rose coloured glasses were back in overdrive again.