I was hoping for a great tour yesterday but it was not to be. I did this same tour five years ago and it was wonderful but things have changed so much.  Tourism has exploded in Italy.  I thought October might be a quieter month but it certainly isn’t. No matter where we go, we are surrounded by hordes of people and the tour into the country was no different.  Our first stop was Sienna. Joey and I got the very back seat of the bus and couldn’t see much as we drove for over two hours.  We disembarked far from the central square and walked for twenty minutes before arriving to meet our church tour guide. After getting organized, we walked to the cathedral with our guide and did a tour of the church.  It certainly was  beautiful with all the marble inlay on the floor and the gorgeous altar and well worth a tour but the groups of people that gathered were hard to maneuver through.  Afterward, we were only given twenty minutes of “free” time which was just long enough to make our way back to our bus tour guide and make another twenty-minute walk back to our bus.  We had NO time to wander the outer streets of the beautiful old city and I was very disappointed and felt bad for Joey who didn’t see anything except the church.

Another drive brought us to a vineyard where we had a lunch of meat, cheese. pasta and dry bread with two tiny cookies for dessert. We had a mixture of English, Asian and Spanish people on our bus and we were surrounded by both Asian and Spanish people at lunch who spoke no English so we had no one to talk to.  The waiters served two wines but such a tiny amount of each that together they didn’t add up to a half a glass. They gave a talk on the wines and of course, had it for sale if we wanted to buy any. The dessert wine was served in a tiny shot glass in which to dip our cookies.  It was all very disappointing.

Back on the bus and we were off to San Gimignano which is another quaint city  that is now filled with tourist shops selling the same things.  I remember thinking that if one more person puts another selfie stick in front of me, they may wear it.  We had an hour to “explore” here.  Our hour was filled with walking up the hill to the end of the street, finding a gelato place, waiting in line for our gelato, sitting near the fountain eating our gelato and then walking back to the bus.  That all took exactly an hour and we were back on the bus.  That was our experience of San Gimignano!

Next, off to Pisa where we once again spent twenty minutes walking to the city centre.  I sat on the steps of the Baptistry while Joey went off to explore the church.  When she got back, I asked her how it was and she said she hadn’t seen it.  When she got there, the guards told her she needed a ticket so off she went to buy one and was told she could buy a ticket but couldn’t get into the church for an hour which was no good as we would be back on the bus by then so she didn’t get to see it. Disappointing for her! The best part of my day was watching a little boy of about two, “talk” on his dad’s cell phone.  He was jabbering a mile a minute using intonations that made it sound like he was having a real conversation.  When his dad tried to take the phone away, the little guy got angry and ran away, chatting on the phone all the time.  He was adorable.

There was also the cutest little dog sitting and staring at me while I was there.  Dogs always make me smile so I took her picture. She came to me and her tag said her name was Nina.

It took us 2 1/2 hours to drive home from Pisa and it was so nice to be back. We stopped for a quick burger before our walk back to the flat.

I thought about the day a lot when I got home.  When I went on it five years ago, we had so much time in each place.  We had time to visit the shops if we chose, walk the centre square in Sienna, and walk up and down the side streets in each place.  Our lunch was overlooking the valley, a beautiful place to dine and our tour group was all English so we enjoyed many conversations with our fellow guests.  Wine bottles were put on the table and we could have as much as we wanted and the lunch was delicious. We also didn’t have to walk to and from each place because the bus left us at the gates to each city.  I decided that the tour companies are so busy now that the buses are no longer allowed to park near the entrances and have to park far away in special areas and we have to walk from there.   At one place, there must have been fifty large buses parked. All the walking added up to about two hours and hence, cut into our time visiting each place.

I did get some nice pictures when I had a few moments to stop and take any but our guide walked so quickly that I didn’t dare stop often. I could hardly keep up as it was and with my short legs, I found I was running most of the time.  I was always exhausted when I got to our destination.

All that I learned from the day is I am done with tours.  I hated being herded and rushed and paying a lot of money to sit on a bus and not seeing or learning anything.

We have no more tours planned and there will be none for sure.  We will just continue exploring the city on our own.