Siena - Final Hours

The next morning I check out of the hostel for the final time and take my bags to the bus station and deposit them there. Then I head to the Jolly Café, but discover it is closed. Rats. I follow the foot traffic back to the center of town and even though it violates several of my qualifiers for a morning place (BUSY, no seating, feels chain-y) I go in anyway; it does have SEVERAL locals patronizing it, so I rationalize I'm being more "authentic."

As I'm standing at the bar, finishing my cappuccino, someone asks me (in Italian) if this is sugar. I look at what she's holding and see that it's brown sugar, but I can't remember "brown" in Italian, so I say yes, but - do you speak English? (Yes) It's brown sugar. "Oh good" she says and I realize she too is American.

We soon get to chatting and I learn that Aimee works for an airline agency in Wyoming and is taking a week of Italian at a language shool in Siena while on vacation. My mouth drops: you can DO that? So we chat for quite a long time and needless to say, by the end of our convo, I want to do this (on a much bigger scale). I don't know how I'd finance it but...MUST DO IT! So I start picking her brain about how she lived in Rome for several months a few years back and start to contemplate some ideas....soon our conversation takes us out to Il Campo (the city center piazza) and we pass an hour or so with quality, intellegent conversation about travel and Americans and our ethnocentricity.

In what feels like a minute, it's lunch time. So we head for the RS recommendation where I had lunch two days prior (meat day) to continue our discussion. This time I order the bow-tie pasta with zucchini - FANTASTIC! It was one of those dishes that looks really plain, but was so completely yummy, I'm hungry for it again just writing about it. We finish our meal, exchange info, and are forced to part ways. I MUST catch my bus (it's the only one!) and she has to go to her first day of class.

I head for the bus station feeling extremely satisfied. It had been a while since I had enjoyed real, quality, intelligent conversation and Aimee had provided just that (not to mention lots of fun ideas for "what next" could mean for me...), plus my belly was quite happy - and that always helps. I made my bus with no hiccups and spent the ride mentally preparing for the 4 hour "lay-over" in Colle Val D'Elsa and figuring HOW would I buy a ticket if nothing was open on a Sunday....