This is a sweet view of the Tuscany countryside, from the tower at San Gimignano.
This is a sweet view of the Tuscany countryside, from the tower
at San Gimignano.
This is a view of San Gimignano from the bell tower. They are
famous for their many towers (over seventy at the city's peak).
You can see two of the towers left of center. San Gimignano was
the coolest city we visited. It's really small, but at one time
was a huge center of commerce, and all the powerful and rich
families would build towers to live in. They would climb in the
tower from a ladder, and then pull up the ladder behind them so
people couldn't break in. They also used boiling oil to dissuade
attackers. They chopped all of the towers off at a certain height
at one point. I'm not sure why, though. San Gimignano also has
the coolest shops.
San Gimignano from a gun port (or whatever it was) in the bell
tower.
Jeff and Naomi, hanging out in Italy. Tuscany kicks ass.
The following pictures are from our second trip to San Gimignano:
RobFan came along for the ride, and the whole time he kept
calling me a girl because we were shopping for gifts and he
doesn't like to shop. He's standing in front of the famous well
in the center of San Gimignano. We went in to the "History
of Torture Through the Ages" museum during this trip, and it
was well worth it. We had visited the torture museum in Ischia, but it didn't compare to the one
in San Gimignano.
San Gimignano has the best card shop in Italy. The daughter of
the old guy shown here makes these killer lithographs, and I
always drop a small fortune in his shop buying all kinds of cards
and posters. It's really nice. Check out the card below, it's a
scan from a postcard that I bought on my very first trip there
three years ago with my Dad.
It's a really nice card, and I bought a big poster size of it for
only $15. With a frame, it's $20. It's a great shop.