Jane's Tuscany 2016

Sunday, October 23, was a day of adventure in Tuscany!

We left the house at 7:00 AM - yes. I was awake & moving - to drive to Siena to catch steam engine headed to the Trequanda Olive Oil Festival!! Sarah did a great job driving in the dark though we did miss a merge due to still not quite believing the signs!! Unfortunately the toll plaza we used to reverse direction did not have an entrance unto the road we had just left before the toll gates so we paid the toll of €1.10 and then made a U-turn!! Then proceeded to take another ticket which we paid €.70 for down the road! It was a nice sunrise as you can see. Once arriving in Siena, it took us awhile to find train station and then finding the entrance to the parking. By now our very comfortable margin of time had disappeared so we hustled into the train station to make our 8:55 departure time! I forgot that this was Italy, not Germany - the train pulled out at 9:15!

We saw different terrain as we journeyed to the smallest train station in Italy. But first we stopped in a different small station to take on water. The engine was unhooked & we headed on Trequanda going back towards the same way we came! Anyway that is what it seemed like. Everyone was able to get off here - by now about an hour into the trip. There was a woman set up with coffee, wine, juice, sandwiches & dolce (sweet) cake which is like pound cake. She made a killing!!! Quite the business opportunity! Here we also had time to take photos & look over the train:

We were fortunate that our compartment wasn't full so I had a section all to myself while Sarah & Phoebe shared another one. An Italian group of 4 had a section with a young Florida couple sharing with a young family - Italian father, Romania mother & 3-year-old boy.

As we proceeded on to our next stop, there was entertainment in each compartment by an energetic trio. At the water stop, the saxophone player struck up a conversation with Sarah using a young woman event organizer as interpreter so we were especially entertained! They played Funiculi for me - remember that song from grade school music class?!