Day 3: Greve and Siena

I'm blogging from Siena in an internet kiosk that
closes in 10 minutes so i'm making this fast...
for starters, it's weird that i'm here and the gators
are about to kick off...but i'm not missing it...but
truly miss one special person in gainesville...
yesterday was truly wonderful, funny, amazing,
enlightening...everything that i could have dreamed of
about a european trip...
we left florence, but not without incident. we took a
taxi to hertz to rent a car. on the way to the
garage, Alli slipped on the incline that weaved its
way into the garage area where our car was located.
she skinned her knee (it could have been worse), but
was tended to by an old garage attendant who applied
some secret potion (that looked like gasoline) to her
knee while Linda and I watched. I think she made his
day. the best moment was watching the man's reaction
when Alli said she was driving (if she can't walk down
a ramp, you want her to drive a car in italy?) we
then left florence in our ford fiesta (with me in the
back seat...HOW FUN!). we headed to the sleepy town of
Greve for the wine festival. it was so small and
quaint. with alli's knee oozing we had an amazing
lunch of panninis (i had a tomato soup that was like
no other) with chianti from greve. the girls then
spent an hour at an embroidery shop while i walked
about. i found a shop that had tanks of chianti where
the shop owner would pour fresh wine into take home
boxes or bottles. i bought a 3 liter box of Chianti
Verranzano for about $10 (more on that later). we then
walked into a jewelry store that had something for
everyone and spent some euros. we even ran into a
couple from the uk that voiced their opinions about
george w. we were all in agreement. the festival was
delayed (due to rain) so we took off for siena. the
winding roads through tuscanny almost made linda sick
and we almost got hit by a bus (which was in our
lane!). unfortunately, the radio sucks just as bad in
europe because we could still hear bon jovi an
aerosmith!!!! gotta go, but will talk about siena
next....