At Home with St. Catherine

Beautiful Tuscany. I have read stories of people who rented a villa in Tuscany for a month. If anyone is interested in sharing expenses, I would love to do it. As we rode the train north we caught glimpses of hilltop towns and castles, sunny fields, little villages--the stuff of dreams. The grocery here in Siena where I bought things for breakfast has sausages and cheeses, ready-made salads and fresh baguettes that all screamed picnic.

We arrived around noon, and although I remembered walking up with Katie 18 years ago, the way wasn't obvious and Steve convinced me that with our luggage we should take a taxi. Well worth it. The taxi couldn't take us the whole way, but he pointed out where we were to go. The place is a baroque fantasy and I will give you pictures tomorrow, but for this afternoon we just wandered around the narrow streets of this medieval town.

We spent more time at the sanctuary of St. Catherine of Siena. It's on the site of her house, but I have a feeling it doesn't look anything like her house would have looked. She was from a trandesman's family in the 14th c. There was an orchard, but I need to do a lot more reading before I can write anything. She was a year old when the plague wiped out half the city and sent it from a major rival of Florence to a backwater. It still produced a pope from the Picolomini family in the 16th c.--my kids all know a song with that name--but never again achieved the same prominence.

It is Catherine's infancy (one of the younger children in a family of twenty something) and the crisis of the plague that interest me. But it comes after several other ideas in my priorities, so I doubt it will ever be written.