motion-sick. We were all happy to get off the bus, and to step out onto a gorgeous hill top, with an amazing view of the land below.San Gimignano turned out to be quite empty. Our bus-load of people were the only people on the streets, and it gave the city a strange ghost-town-like feel. The only stores were souvenir shops and there were a couple of restaurants open. But the city seemed to be a false city: it only exists for tourists, and since the tourists mostly come in the summer, the place was senza nessuno.
That being said, it is easy to see why people flock to the city. Its views are simply astonishing. Each building is unique and interesting to look at. We climbed to an outpost of its walls and saw a panorama of Tuscany. There is nothing quite like it.
That night, we headed a couple streets over to the soccer stadium. AC Siena (Associazione CalcioSiena) was playing Reggina Calcio, a team from Calabria. The crowd was my favorite part of the night, but the game was entertaining as well. Neither team is very good at all, but they were evenly matched. Everyone in the crowd was wearing black, like everyone I've seen so far in Italy, but since they were in a big group, it was much
more obvious. About every third person was smoking, and every other person kept yelling inappropriate things at the field. There were stadium-wide chants and songs that everyone seemed to know the words to, and some of which were shamelessly plagiarized from American 60's songs ("Sloop John B", for example). One memorable and very rude chant spoke directly to a Reggina player, and went like this: "Cozza, tu sei, un figlio di putana!"It took us until the second half to score, and the crowd went absolutely crazy.
The crowd sat on one side of the stadium, which was the side we were on, so the photo lies a little. There were a good two thousand people there.
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