San Gimignano

The next place to visit on our Tuscany agenda was San Gimignano. This town is a UNESCO world heritage site and is famous for its preserved medeival buildings, especially the towers in the centre of the town.
What I can tell you this place will never ever be famous for is its ample parking. Finding someplace to stop was a nightmare. We were alson introduced to our bout of Italian racism, police controlling the parking lots waved in cars with Italian plates (like the Joneses rental car) and made the non-Italian cars (like mine) circle aimlessly until despair took away all hope.

The town was really packed with people. There was also some sort of open air concert happening that evening, so that was also a contributng factor to the crowds. I though the level of human congestion did take away from my enjoyment of the place though.
We all marched to the centre of town to meet up and get our bearings. Apparently Uncle Bernhard was doing something that Delaney felt the need to rebel against.
Another of the main attractions is the heavily fresco-ed church in the centre of town. This was pretty impressive and sadly did not allow any photos. Liam even seemed to enjoy looking at all the paintings and Claudia explained what all the bible stories were that he could see up there.

Something must have sunk in with him, since about 3 weeks later in the car, Liam piped up from the back seat with "Mama, when those guys nailed Jesus to the wood, that was not very nice was it."

There is also a big part of the church dedicate to the local saint, Saint Fina. She was apparently a local girl who got ill and then spent five years lying on a board to become more Christ-like. At least that was the depth of the explanation I was given. As I read wikipedia, it seems that she lay on the board so long that her flesh grew into it and she was "food for rats and worms." ouch.

Here is a painting from her chapel, photo not by me.