This city has been bad luck for us but we are still having a great time. I can't remember what I said last. We left Orvieto three days ago. In the train station I bought tickets and then misplaced or forget to get the 75,000 lire (about $37) change. Not sure where it went. Oh well. We took the train and then a bus to get to Siena since it is not on the main train line.

We went to one hotel but they only had one night open so we trucked the bags to another and got one for three days. We had to change on the second day though.

We moved into the second room after one day and I took a shower. This got the entire bathroom floor wet because of the way thay make the showers. The tile is fairly non-slip though. Then Wynette walked into the bathroom and then out again. The tile is non-slip but the tile on the door is not and she slipped and fell hitting her back on the step and her head on the tile. She was badly shaken up. We took a taxi to the emergency room (pronto soccorro). They directed us to an English speaking doctor, who, I have to say, was incredibly hansome. A really cute young Italian guy with wavy hair. Wynette said he looked like someone on ER. Anyway, he checked her out and said it was just muscle bruises. She did get a head x-ray because they like to be careful on those things.

It was all pretty fast and easy. The whole thing only took about an hour or so and it didn't cost anything at all! Their medical system seems to be about like ours. Our out-of-pcckket was two taxi rides and it was kind of fun to take a taxi for once. It was pretty cheap actually. The taxi drivers go pretty fast around these people in the street. It was scarier inside the taxi than it is seeing them on the street.

The good news is that Wynette's ankle is all better but she was pretty much hobbling around most of yesterday. Luckily she brought a lot of ibuprofin and that seems to be making it much better. She is doing much better today and can walk pretty normally. She has trouble bending over. Basically she is just pretty sore. We think we can still do some country walking at out next stop.

I was thinking about the baths in hotles. Almost all the hotels have them now and they didn't years ago. MY theory is that rents caught up with remodeling and plumbing costs. The cities are so crowded and the rents so high that is doesn't seem like much to add bathrooms to the rooms and gives them an edge. Our hotel in Rome had this cute little elevator that they retrofitted between the curves in the stairway. It was about two feet wide (we have a picture).

Between the hotels we seem to have lost our pages from our Frommer guide about Tuscany. We went out and got another guide book (The Rough Guide to Italy) which we like pretty well but Frommer is always good to have. We were hot and tired and set it down somewhere.

With all the stuff happening we didn't see as much of Siena as we would have liked. But we did get to walk around quite a bit. We have been doing a little shopping (but not much). They have lots of things here that you can't get in the US. we got some very stylish cheese graters for example. And they had a great-looking potato peeler. We like to go into stores that have bathroom and bedroom stuff. It is all so different from the US.

Siena is similar to Orvieto. It is a walled city with narrow, hilly, winding streets. The streets are narrow and have four story buildings on both sides. They look pretty old abnd delapidated but the guidebooks call them Renaissance Palaces.

We went to the main art museum here and it was quite good. Siena was a commune in the 1400s and big into justice and good government. A lot of the art is polemical. One most famous frescos here show "good government" where everybody is happy and "bad government" with a horned guy in charge and Fear flying over everyone and people getting mugged in the streets. They seem to have had a pretty good place but the Plague really did them in and they government turned autocratic. Then they were conquered by Florence and that was the end of this good government, justice, truth, etc. stuff. The Midici controlled everything with an iron hand. They wanted to take over the banking in Siena for one thing.

Anyway, the art was mostly excellent. We got a tape recorded tour "for two" with two earphones. After about five minutes of being tethered together by these earphone I let Wynette listen and I read the blurbs on the wall, which I prefer anyway. The frescos are beautiful with lovely colors still after 500 years.

There was also a high tower. I decided to go up myself and live "Gimpy" behind. It was a good thing too. There must have been about 50 flights of stairs and maybe 500 steps. The steps were these narrow tightly winding staircases that were barely big enough for one person. When you met someone (I probably met 40-50 people on the way up) you had to flatten yourself in the corner and let them pass -- or else they had to do that -- we pretty much alternated.

The view from the top was fantastic though. I could see 360 degrees, all of Siena and the countryside around it. I've never seen so many red-tiled roofs. That is all they use here it seems. In Orvieto our room looked out over some red-tiled roofs that must have been 100s of years old. They looked in very poor condition to me. And we saw a lot of used tile lying around in piles on the streets too. I don't know if it is reused like brick in the US but I wouldn't want to use this stuff again.

We decided to make reservations for the next couple of places. After today we go to Montepulciano, a Tuscan hill town, for two days. It is supposed to be very nice and have lovely walks. Then three days in Florence (maybe four) and then three days on the Italian Rivera at Santa Marghereti L-something.

I was thinking of things I forgot to mention. One was that we saw a very strong police presence in Rome. They were on every street corner almost. Sometimes they carried automatic weapons.

WE ran into an American coming into Siena. He was on the bus with us and helped us get where we were going. He was from Phoenix but was a PhD students at Berkeley in history. He had spent a month in Siena in January and we living in Rome (but up to Siena for a visit). He said the dessicated nun was St. Rita. It seems she is making a tour of Italy even though she has been dead for 100 years. Try that Elvis!

Well, the internet chain train is closing for tonight so I have to send this off. More later.

Wynette and I both enjoyed your email. I just sent one to everyone which you probably just got. It is fun to get everything down while it is fresh in my mind. I fogot to mention that Bib Dylan (Bobby Zimmerman to you) is playing here in Florence tomorrow night!

How are the playoffs going? Sounds like the Lakers might win it all. That would be fun.

And how is the deck going? It will be nice to have a deck by the carpenter of the stars ;-)

I didn't mention it in the general letter but Wynette had a misstep on the (dark) stairs of our hotel yesterday and got a bit shaken up but she is fine now. She has been using industrial size quantities of ibuprofen but it was been working. I'm starting to think the the girl is accident-prone.

Hello from Santa Margherita Ligure (SML),

We took the train from Florence, change at Pisa to SML. SML is on the east side of the Italian Riveria. The Rough Guide says the Italian Riveria is not as developed and flashy as th French Riveria. It is still a tourist area but I think that assessment is correct. We have fallen in love with the place and are staying five days.

The train goes up the coast right by the water but the terrain is so rocky and cliffy (see Buffy) that it is in tunnels most of the time. We went through the first tunnel and came out for about 100 yeards and saw this incredible blue water and rugged coastline. We continued to catch glimpses of it for the next 90 minutes but you never get a really good view from the train.

There was a group of four students next to us. They were playing a game where they were chanting "St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Matthew, etc." in rhythm. Each person had a part and had to do it at the right time or they were out. It looked fun but we never relaly figured it out exactly.

The first places you get to are called "Cinque Terre" which is roughly "Five Towns". It is five small fishing villiages in a row, each one only a mile or two from the next. They all looked very quaint from the train. The students got off at Monterosso. We figured out later that the students go to these towns and the more upscale crowd (that's us ;-) goes to SML and Portofino higher up the coast. One thing we figured out is that the Cinque Terre towns are on open coast and do not have harbors. SML and Portofino have lovely ports for pulling in with your yacht. Unfortunately we left our yacht at home.

We kept on going -- it was about two hours from Pisa -- to Santa Margherita Ligure. There are two Santa Margherita's in Italy but this is the one in Liguria (basically a state or province). We loved the place as soon as we saw it. It is a smallish town (about 10,000) that is part small Italian town and part seaside resort. The "big" resort in the area is Portofino. This is a very small town (less than 1000) that is a seaside resort and watering place for the beautiful people full time. SML (so says the Rough Guide) gets the overflow from Portofino.

anyway, the town is on a very nice harbor, very protective. I don't suppose the Mediterranian has very big storms in any case. A lot of boats were anchored and docked there. The terrain goes up quickly a hills about 1500 feet high and so it is built on a hill. It is not as steep as the hill towns in Tuscany but it goes up a lot. It is exactly as you might picture a little Italian town by the sea. Red roofs everywhere, of course, and churches. The water is a beautiful blue and was pretty calm when we arrived (and it has stayed that way).

We went to the hotel we had reserved and it was very nice. The rooms were recently remodeled and were modern albeit a bit small. WE reserved three days but that left us two free days before we had to be back in Rome. We decided we liked that place and would stay five days. This saves a travel day, checking in and out, etc.

WE seem to be here right at the beginning of the season. Things are still not too busy but everything is open and in full swing. The town was pretty quiet when we arrived on Thursday. We walked the streets last night (Saturday night) and things has gotten much more crowded. The harbor had a lot more boats in it too. The restaurants along the water were filled with what we called "beautiful people" They were mostly yound and well dressed and looked fairly affluent. It was fun to walk around and just watch people.

The hotel is fairly cheap for a resort ($80 night) but the food is a little more expensive. The food has changed too. Everything is seafood now, as you would expect. It is very good too. Also the bread has gotten saltier. In Tuscany the bread is mostly made without salt. We heard that the bread gets saltier as you go south but this seems to be an exception since we went northwest. The bread in Tuscany was almost unsalted. We didn't eat it alone but waited until we had some sauce or olive oil from a dish to dip it in. Here you can eat the bread alone. I guess they always eat the bread with sauces in Tuscany, or they just got used to unsalted bread.

WE have used more pictures here than anywhere else in the trip. Every view is beautiful. On the first day we took a walk to Portfino. There is a developed trail along the water (well, quite a ways up from the water) from SML to Portofino. It starts in SML as a paved walkway and basically it is paved the whole way, which is about three miles. But don't get the wrong idea, it was beautiful and amazing and much better than we had hoped. Almost all the land it privately owned but this trail goes through it all. You walk by the back yards of all these lovely estates. Most of them have incredible views of the water. We saw three or four that were being completely remodeled from the bare walls out.

The trail, as I said, was mostly paved and had steps when it was steep. It avoided switchbacks by just building a flat paved trail on 45 degree slopes. There were many beautiful views. The best part was going into Portofino but I'll save that for the next letter, which will probably be later today. It is aboiut 5 AM in Albuquerque now, 4 AM in LA. More later.