I’ve been looking for wolves whenever I have had a free moment, and have finally seen some!

They were down by a shipping container that is used to contain cardboard fires (which is how cardboard is disposed of).  The disposal people use old cooking oil to get the fires started, and the wolves like the smell; I’d been told they often hang out near the container. For the last two weeks, although I’d seen their tracks, I’d not seen the animals.

First one came out to investigate my footsteps, then another, and another, and another.  To my surprise, the first one was bold and trotted right towards me.  It got so close, I had problems focusing on it.  I knew that I first had to pay attention to the situation at hand, and worry about photos later, because it wasn’t happening the way I wanted.

Anticipating a distant viewing, I was carrying a monster 400 MM lens, and wasn’t at all prepared for the more initimate circumstances presented by this animal.  While it came to within 6 feet of me, another one slipped behind a rise and started to flank me.  “Oh no you don’t” I thought, and started to casually back up.  Bold guy followed me, but the one behind the ridge eventually came back into sight, and not in the scariest location – behind me – that I had worried about.  Eventually, when it realized I wasn’t going to give it any food – or whatever it was expecting - bold guy flopped down and huffed, just like my dog.

Speaking of my dog: I have often heard the remark that my dog looks like a “snow wolf.”  Now I know exactly how similar he is!  The wolves are more vulpine, and have bigger feet – huge feet, with furry tops larger than the footprint of the pads – which are large enough:

but the comparison is apt:

I wasn’t comfortable being surrounded by a pack of wolves, so I kept moving away.  They followed me for a couple of hundred yards, but at a more respectable distance than the first encounter.  Every time I stopped, they stopped.  Every time I moved, they moved.  I took a few pictures but was uncertain of how to handle the situation; I wanted to get more shots of the wolves interacting but every time I showed interest, they came closer.  It wasn’t really what I wanted, because I had no nearby shelter.  To my knowledge, they’ve never attacked a person here, but I’ve heard stories about people’s hands being nibbled.  How dangerous are these particular guys, anyway?

Eventually, they all lay down and started howling.  It sounded just like my dog! Other, unseen wolves returned the howl.  After a while, they all got up and walked out of sight, sometimes playing with each other and bounding in a recognizable play attitude, as at a dog park.  I am not fooled by appearances though – these are wild animals – and I was both glad that they were away and dissapointed that I didn’t get to observe them longer.

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I promised that I would reveal what we do in the tent on the side of the airplane.  It’s no big secret; I was just waiting for the opportunity to get the right images.

The purpose of my trip here is to support the switchyard project, which is a collaboration between multiple universities and funded by the NSF.  This paper provides a good description of what it’s all about, but here’s the synopsis:

The Switchyard project samples the marine environment in the Lincoln Sea (just north of
northern Ellesmere Island, Canada and Greenland) north to the Pole. We call this the
“Switchyard” region because like a train switching yard, different water masses and sea
ice types converge into this region and are sent on their way <…>.

 This is the water that influences the downstream deep water formation
and thus global ocean circulation, and so it is crucial to document <yearly>changes in
this region to achieve both understanding and a predictive capability.

Specifically, I am supporting the hydrochemical section of the project.  The “hydro section” is run by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of Columbia University in New York.  I work for Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, which is collaborating with LDEO on a new data-collection buoy for which I’ve written the firmware.  I’m also responsible for fielding it, repairing it, and generally tending to it during this field test.  I am also assisting LDEO in the deployment of the hydrochemical sample collection equipment.

 The work has been in progress for several years, and hopefully will continue for many more, so that people can get a better picture of Arctic change over time.  In a nutshell, though, we can already see that:

1. The amount of fresh water in the Arctic is increasing, and that it’s coming from melting ice;
2. This water is draining into the north Atlantic.

What does this mean?  The north polar ice cap is melting more than it used to – it’s warming up; in the next few decades, perhaps within my lifetime, it could be that in the summer, at least, there would be no (or little) ice at the north pole. 

University of Washington oceanographer Mike Steele gave a talk to station personnel during one of our non-flight “weather” days here, and an audience member asked “How do you know that global warming wouldn’t be happening naturally, despite human influences?”  This is a good question and an understandable one.  My answer is to compare it to smoking: we are all mortal, but those of us who smoke are, on average, aging faster and with forseeable illnesses.  It is absurd to maintain that smoking does not affect health, even if you can’t predict with precision exactly how it will effect a specific individual.  It is like this with the planet: it is unlikely that the warming we are observing is not being accelerated – or caused outright – by people. 

Look at it another way: mass extinction by bombardment from outer space is a natural, recurring phenomenon.  However, that doesn’t mean that we should not be concerned about such things happening naturally, or that we should start pushing asteroids into the earth.  I’m pretty sure that if someone were to try pushing one down, the rest of us would try to stop them from doing it, and if we knew one was coming naturally, we would also try to stop it.  The fact that something occurs naturally is irrelevant to a discussion of safety; rattlesnake bites, lightning, and broken hips in the elderly are also natural, yet we still try to avoid them.

So to anyone who questions the global warming phenomenon, I say that yes, there is uncertainty about why it’s happening, how fast, and what effects it will ultimately have – just like drinking, smoking, getting hit by lightening, or driving without a seat belt - all of which also may not kill you.  There is no reasonable debate about the fact that global warming is occurring and that the things people are doing to the planet are the kinds of things that will make this change happen faster than is natural. 

 Now that my rant is complete…  The pictures of the hydrochemical sectioning process.  We fly a twin otter aircraft from the airfield at Alert, and based upon the weather, choose to go to one of ten locations on a line from here to the pole.  The same ten locations are sampled every year.

We pull hundreds of pounds of equipment out of the plane, assemble a gas-powered ice auger, and drill a hole in the ice.  If there is deep snow on the ice, we have to shovel it out of the way first.  As the chips come out of the hole, some of us work with shovels to keep the hole clear.  Every so often, we must pause and attach another flight (section) of ice auger bit in order to get deeper.

Eventually the auger punches through the bottom, and water momentarily gushes up through the hole.  the water has a startling azure color to it, like the tropics.

Sometimes the ice is also clear and the whole area takes on a beautiful color:

We then set up a tent around the hole and start up a heater to make it possible to work comfortably inside. 

The sampler has 12 bottles, arranged in groups of 4 within “cassettes.”  The cassettes are manually stacked on top of each other and fasted together to make a torpedo-like package that is lowered through the hole using a winch.

As the last cassette is placed, the assembly is lowered to depth – usually about 500 meters or so.

Using another hole drilled a short distance away, I was able to use my scuba camera on a pole to get these shots of the package coming through the bottom of the ice.  The ice in this location was about 5 feet thick.

Only about half of it is visible in this next image:

As the assembly glides down into the water, instrumentation returns values for depth, conductivity, and temperature.  On the way back up, where there are “interesting” features in these measurements, a computer command is sent ordering one of the sample bottles to close, collecting water from that depth.  Within the tent on the top of the ice, one of us operates the computer, and one or two of us manhandle the winch and cassettes as they go down and come back up.  When they return, they are pretty heavy!  We have to lift them into the plane, where they are stored in coolers until we return to the lab at Alert.  Once there, scientists will perform measurements on some of the water, and package the remainder for analysis back at LDEO.

Meanwhile, we’ve drilled another hole outside and, using the most high-tech methods available, lowered a bottom sounder below the ice.

This mess of equipment collects the bottom sounder data and GPS position and sends it home via satellite.  We hope to streamline it – this is only the first experimental deployment of the thing.  Although it does not float, because it sits at the surface it is technically a buoy, and we’ve named it the “Arctic iBuoy.” 

 

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Today we worked close to the magnetic north pole.

I should explain that there are two north poles; the “true” (or “geodetic”) one that is found at the “top” of the world where lines of longitude meet, and the magnetic one, which is the attractor for all “north” magnet ends on the earth.  The geodetic pole is fixed; it never moves and can be thought of as sitting on the floor of the Arctic ocean, covered by ocean and surrounded by a surface icecap.  The magnetic one wanders; in my lifetime it has moved hundreds of miles.  The magnetic north pole is currently south-west of the geodetic  north pole, off the coast of arctic Canada, and is moving towards Russia.

There was a lot of beautiful ice there covered with hoarfrost, and occasional startling blue patches that must be seen to believed.  We met our science goals and left, having visited the region for only a couple of hours.  We were not right on top of the pole, but close enough that my compasses didn’t agree, and didn’t always return to the same place; they seemed confused.  It is this way for miles in every direction.  I tried using my map navigation compass, my wrist compass, and my iphone; none of them agreed in the slightest.  A compass that was spun or shaken would not go back to a fixed point, but would wander around, occasionally finding renewed vigor in pointing to a random spot for a while. As you can see from the image, a compass turned does not re-orient to magnetic north.  I took the pictures from the same orientation.  

Click on any image to enlarge.

 

 

 

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There is a big, slow-moving storm hanging over us, so all air operations have been suspended.  This gives me some free time for much-needed sleep and some R&R.  A few of us decided to take an excursion using tracked vehicles.  Although I’m too suited up to be easily identified, that’s me. 

 

We were planning on going to “Crystal Mountain,” a local ridge where there are deposits of quartz crystals that are particularly nice, but there was an almost complete white-out and we had to turn back, because we couldn’t see the road or the terrain. The little dot in the next picture is the sun; although you can’t tell, there is a horizon and mountains in this image!

Such conditions are disorienting.  Even when it’s bright and sunny in the Arctic, distances are hard to gauge accurately, because when everything’s white and there are no familiar objects for scale, it is hard to tell how far away things are.  In conditions like these, there is simply nothing to see at all, except the occasional rock that is close by and sticks out of the snow.  Bouncing around in the vehicle, it was easy to imagine becoming motion sick; I tried not to think about it.  My eyes strained to find something to look at, without success.

Last night, when the weather was better, my friend Jeff and I went out looking for animals.  Can you see the critter in this next image (click to enlarge any image)?

Here it is, a little larger:

Earlier in this trip there were a lot of sunny days that exposed some soil and the plants that cling to the rocky surface.  Although it’s hard to believe, things do grow here: lichens, mosses, and grass.  The Arctic Hares can be found wherever this stuff has been exposed and there isn’t too much human activity.

Here’s a composite of all the things I watched the hare do: eat, dig, sit, and run.  Its “circle of fear” was about 20 feet.

One word comes to mind when seeing this plush, cute, cottony hare: Bunneeeeee!

 

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A few days ago, I finally reached the pole. 

The switchyard project has defined ten locations on an imaginary line stretching from Alert to the pole.  Each year, the same locations are sampled; over time, the properties of the water at these locations are compared to each other and to other measurements in order to contribute to understanding of climate behavior.

The distance from Alert to the pole is about 450 Nautical miles, or 520 “normal” miles.  Regardless of our particular destination, our standard  proceedure is to pack up the aircraft early in the morning, fly a short distance west along the shoreline, and then head north. We carry a lot of stuff – the instruments to perform the water sampling, a winch, generator, ice auger, fuel for everything (including, sometimes, the aircraft), survival gear, and a lot of odds and ends.  We have headsets so that we can talk with everyone on board – typically, 4 or 5 people including the pilots.  Everyone pitches in to get the work done; when on the ground, the pilots help us set up the gear for our operations.

In the pictures below you can see the sea ice in the forground – this is what the surface of the ocean looks like from high above.  The ice is not one unbroken sheet, but is composed of plates which smash together and form pressure ridges. In the background are the mountains of north Ellesmere island.  

 

The wind pushes the ice around, causing cracks (called “leads”) to open up.  The leads can last for days or just hours.

When we reach the vicinity of the day’s sampling location, we’ll try to find a reasonably flat-looking area to land on, and  drop to a lower altitude to examine the candidates.

When we find a good one, the pilot will pull some “energetic” maneuvers, turning repeatedly to go back and forth and an altitude of only a few feet, eventually doing a touch-and-go to drag the skis along the ice without actually landing in order to gauge the roughness of the surface.  In the picture below, you can see by the horizon line that we are pulling a tight left turn at low altitude.

The landing is usually pretty bumpy, with occasional rafting into the air because of an ice hummock.  The pilots and our expedition leader are experienced at choosing good sites to land; the trick is to find a spot where the ice is “thin” – but not too thin to support the plane.  In this area of the Arctic, the sea ice can be 20 feet thick, but the ideal thickness for us is 4 feet or so.  Any less than 2 feet will not support the plane; any more than 12 feet and we can’t drill through it with the equipment we’re carrying.  just a few years ago, an aircraft fell through the ice; nobody was injured, but the plane sank and was lost.  Fortunately there was a helicopter in the area and all on board were rescued within 12 hours.  This year there is no helicopter; if we became stranded, we’d have to rely on another aircraft, which would land as close as possible and wait for us to walk to it.  This would be a challenge, because walking long distances on the ice is not simple.  Leads are usually too broad to jump across; false surfaces conceal thin ice; pressure ridges are more rugged up close than you would think.  Falling in the water without warm shelter nearby would likely be a death sentence – assuming you could even get out of the water.

Eventually, we land, unload the plane, and set up a tent on the side of the plane where we do our work.  What we do in that tent will be covered in a future post.

 

In order to reach the pole, we flew to a fuel cache previously set up on the ice.  Here’s what it looks like from ther air:

 

Once at the cache, we refuel from 55-gallon drums using a small pump.

Two hours later, we were at the north pole!  There is nothing to visually distinguish it from any other spot on the Arctic icecap, but it was pretty cool to see map on the GPS display.  While orbiting the site to look for a good landing spot, we circumnavigated the earth several times.  Here’s out victory shot.  From left ot right, that’s co-pilot Mike, Pilot Troy (both of Kenn Borek Air), Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory expedition leader Dale, and myself (of JHUAPL).  It was pretty warm out (5F) and there was no wind, so we’re not over-dressed.

Here’s some images of the beautifully wind-sculpted ice:

In the next image you can see the startling blue color of sea ice when it’s not covered by frost and snow.  At the bottom of the lead in this image, you can also just see the green lnie of algae that grows on the bottom of the ice (you may have to click to enlarge the image).

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After our short stay in the bustling metropolis of Kangerlussuaq it was time to take off again.

We tumbled back into the Herc and flew up  the rugged coast of Greenland on our way to Thule Air Force Base (about 3 hours), where we refueled and took off again in short order.  Couldn’t take any pictures on the base, but here are some of the surrounding area.

This mesa (below) stands in the bay right off the Thule runway.  Someone told me it has a golf course on it.  That figures; in my experience, the USAF is golf course-centric.

Next stop, Canadian Forces Station Alert (3.5 hours frm Thule)!  In every direction, as far as the eye can see – and much farther than that – ice and snow cover the mountainous and unforgiving terrain.  There are no trees and no other human structures; we are 450 nautical miles from the geographic north pole.  The ocean is completely covered with multi-year ice, filled with broken, jumbled chunks of ice (the foreground in the next picture).  Where soil is exposed, it is black, rocky,  and inhospitable.

Below: Alert seen from the air.

Here I am in front of the famous Alert sign, with names of visitor’s cities and the distances.

The Herc offloads extra fuel into the base’s tanks, turns around, rumbles up the ice runway and is soon gone in a cloud of disturbed snow and noise.

The base itself is a complex of interconnected modules, each standing off of the ground to isolate them thermally as much as possible; if they were on the ground, they’d melt the icy soil and sink into it.  The doors to these buildings are like industrial refrigerator doors, with heavy latches to withstand the arctic winter’s fierce winds. 

The air is cold, but mild for this place – about 5F.  However, when the wind blows, it is truly frigid, becoming intolerable for bare skin that is exposed for more than a moment. I’ve only been here a week, and in that time, it’s been mostly sunny and beautiful, except for one day, when a 30-knot wind howled out of the south, transforming what had been simply very cold air into something completely different and a little scary.  Get caught in the wrong place, and that weather will kill you. 

At this season, the sun never sets, but simply orbits around at the same altitude.  The only difference is the direction of its light; at 2AM you need sunglasses. 

The wind sculpts the snow into amazing shapes:

Alert sits on a bay, so the ocean is right there.  Below: a charming quonset hut with an ocean view!

Here’s the beach.  On this shore, there is no surf, no seagulls, and no sound of any sort.  The ocean is completely silent, which is part and parcel of the barren, treeless land, the unbelievable cold, and a sense of utter desolation.  At this place, I feel that I am truly at the end of the earth – and in a sense this is true, because north of this, right at my feet, starts the Lincoln sea of the Arctic ocean, which stretches all the way to the pole, where there is no land – only ice. 

 

Looking to the south, over the windswept snow, there are mountains.  Imagine what it would be like to walk to the horizon; what would it take to survive?  In bad weather, the conditions are hard to believe.  In 1991, a Hercules aircraft just like the one I flew in on crashed only 10 miles away from Alert;  It took 3 days for rescuers to reach the survivors.

As lifeless as all of this looks, it is deceiving.  There is, in fact, lots of life here.  Under the snow, there are mosses and lichens that grew in the brief summer when the snow melts at lower altitudes.  These are eaten by Lemmings and hares, which are eaten by foxes, which are eaten by wolves.  Under the sea ice, there is a layer of algae that grows at the interface between ice and liquid sea water; fish eat the algae, seals eat the fish; polar bears, of course, eat the seals.  I have not yet seen any animals, but they are here, as their tracks show:

Polar bears are sighted here every so often.  Right now there are old polar bear tracks near the end of the runway.  Speaking of tracks, it is not always possible to get around on wheeled vehicles.  The base has plenty of snowmobiles, and also tracked vehicles like these:

I am extremely busy and the internet connection is very slow, but I will get more posts out when I can.

 

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I’m working as part of a Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab/Columbia University LDEO collaboration on the Switchyard project, which among other things, collects data about the origin of water in the arctic region, and is also collecting depth soundings for the sea floor under the arctic ice in the area known as the Lincoln sea.  I’m the team member from JHU that wrote the firmware for the device and is taking it into the Arctic to use it for the first time.

See here for a map of my trip up to the polar region.  I’m not literally staying at the geographic north pole, but at a military/research base that is the northern most inhabited place on the planet – CFS (Canadian Forces Station) Alert Bay.  Alert bay is about 450 miles from the pole; we’ll be flying twin otter ski planes daily from Alert towards the Pole, landing at various spots and drilling holes through the ice so that we can sample the ocean water beneath and insert sensors under the ice.

The Air National Guard is responsible for ferrying people and supplies northward,under the management of the national science foundation.  The departure point is Stratton Air force base in Schenectady, NY, which is the home of the 109th Air lift wing of the NY air national guard, which performs the flights. So they picked us up from our hotel at 5AM, and we were briefed and awaited boarding permission.  The plane had already been stuffed with our gear.

 

It took about 6.5 hours, but eventually, the Dramatic coast of Greenland came into view.

Greenland is a majestically barren and quiet place.  We landed at Kangerlussuaq, which is a base dedicated to supporting various arctic missions.  Kangerlussuaq sits just inside the arctic circle.  The Kangerlussuaq International Science Support organization (KISS) provides housing, food and other logistics to people like me – scientists and engineers going to the polar regions.

Since it doesn’t get dark until midnight, I was able to borrow a bike from KISS and take a pretty difficult ride up to Black ridge, which overlooks the town.  Along the way I saw some of the unique Greenland Dogs.

Musk oxen are hunted and are a common source of food.  I was fed Musk Ox stew for dinner.

This is what it looks like at 10 PM here.  The effect will be even more pronounced close to the pole.

Note the street names.

Check out the sign…

There are no roads here; every board and sack of cement has come here on an aircraft.  It’s not beautiful, but it is very welcoming.

Tomorrow we will get up at 5AM, which is better than the 4AM wakeup today!  Then, we will fly to Alert, with a stop for refueling in Thule.

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There are so many things to show about Siena’s main duomo that it deserves a post of its own. Note that the city has a number of fantastic duomos, but we had time only for this one. The building dominates the skyline.

The facade is as complex as a coral reef. How do they keep it clean?

A while ago (1339) the builders started a major expansion; but the plague hit, Florence invaded, and the city fell on hard times. Like that weedy old car on blocks in the front yard, it never got done.

Fortunately for the rest of us, the completed portion remains, and commands excellent views of the Tuscan countryside rolling away into the distance.

Upon entering the duomo, the visitor is presented with an overwhelming sensory experience, the kind of thing that creates interference patterns on TV cameras.  Every surface crawls with designs.

Off to one side is this modest-looking doorway.  What could be inside?  It’s the Piccolomini library, an understated little project commemorating a Sienese pope. Note the dog in the painting overhead; there were quite a few dogs portrayed in the duomo.

Like I said, just a modest room dedicated to the memory of a humble servant of God. Did I mention that some of the stauary around the doorway was done by Michelangelo and his people?

The books in this library are illuminated manuscripts, lined up underneath of the gigantic panels representing scenes from the life of Pope Pius II.

Another dog. Oh yeah, there’s a pope in the painting too.  Well, actually, he’s not a pope yet in this picture, being a young man seeking his fortune. A very cocky lad with startling fashion tastes.

In the next picture, doesn’t it look the guy in the green robe is about to pin a “kick me” sign on blue robe’s back, and the audience is laughing about it?  The look on green robe’s face is priceless.  On the right, big beard is too disgusted to keep looking and averts his gaze.  Two seats away from big beard, on the other side of big beard’s red-hatted companion, sits blue hat, who looks a bit verklempt.  Someone’s been overdoing it with the Tuscan white beans, maybe?  At Blue hat’s right sits a man with a right arm attached to the wrong side of his body – or maybe that’s just an extra arm he keeps around, like a spare tire.  Something ain’t right there. Its owner seems to realize this too, and gazes at it in fascination.

The next picture answers the question: “What’s under those cardinal hats, anyway?”  Answer: a really bad haircut. Pink robe at lower left looks surprised; but maybe it’s his reaction not to the haircut, but the beehive on the pope’s head.

Your average illuminated manuscript.  Sorry about the reflections; I didn’t have a polarizer.

I can’t read Latin, so I can’t be certain, but I eventually concluded that this figure is looking up in horror at the garish ceiling.

Beautiful decorative  illuminations.

This manuscript specialized in less commonly known nativity stories.  Below: The Christ child pupates in a teepee.  The animals are furious. The angels, like embarrassed teenagers, stand stiffly with their arms crossed, like wallflower nerds at a prom. Joseph looks like a Hari Krishna, except for the haircut, which looks exactly like the pageboy haircut seen on the king of any deck of cards. Mary is stunned; this is not how things were supposed to work out!

And then, there’s this illustration, depicting the lesser-known encephalitic Christ child (also paradoxically and simultaneously suffering from micropenis and gigantism, the poor boy), and some kind of foot-fetishizing dirty old pedophile.  The Christ child sez: “Peace out, man.”

It’s interesting to note, in the next image, that bad toupees existed in the past.  Also, Mary is stoned out of her gourd.

“What did you put in your mouth?  Don’t lie to me, I saw you eat something!  You know you can’t eat your sweets until you’ve eaten your meat.”  The resentmentnon the kid’s face is one of the most perfectly executed things I saw in Italy.

Continuing the trend shown in human figures, and obviously painted by someone who had never actually seen a dolphin, is this excellent rendition of the rare, encephalitic, duck-billed, eared dolphin-snake. What I like about this is that despite the fact that the artist was really stretching here – painting things he’d only heard about – his skill is evident; the result is at least as compelling as if it were anatomically accurate (if for no other reason than freakishness).

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Opening the shutters in our room  at the Hotel Porto Romana in Siena,this unremarkable sunrise was revealed:

Nothing to see here; go back to bed.

Later, the fog lifted, unveiling a glorious dei.

After a short walk, we entered the old city via the Hotel’s namesake, the gate named “Porto Romana.”

Immediately, the ancient streets captured our hearts. Buildings grow around the remains of previous structures the way old trees grow around a fencepost.  Over millenia, as the city grew, it overtook old fortifications and crept beyond them, incorporating them into houses and buildings. Cultures came and went; languages peaked like waves and then receded. Yet some things remained; a couple of words from a forgotten tongue; food invented by ancestors hundreds of years gone; religious celebrations warped beyond recognition and although now unquestioned, oddly out of line with current practices. As with the culture, generations of repairs and impromptu modifications shaped the city in an organic way; you can never tell what lies around a corner; regularity is not the norm.  This quality fills the traveler with curiosity and rewards the idle wanderer.

Passing an unremarkable open door, I glanced inside to see an aged library.  Alas, I am illiterate in Italy; yet the books and their specialized chamber attract me.  At one time, men wearing silk stockings and wigs must have had servants hold candles for them as they read the precious volumes.  I have no idea what is going on here, except that it seems to be featuring Garibaldi and the revolution.

What is this thing? The patron saint of the block?  A symbol of the section of the city (the city is split into nine distinct  regions)?

Midaevil ironwork abounds; torch holders and horse tethers are all over.  I’m guessing that this well-adorned spot was the equivalent of the CEO’s reserved parking space.

Stuff like this doesn’t last forever; it has to be preserved.  Kudos to the Sienese for valuing and preserving this for the rest of us to enjoy!

The narrow winding streets make cars difficult, although I did see the occasional huge SUV lumbering around.  Scooters are more practical; Italians love their scooters.

They really like them.

The city’s main plaza, the Piazza del Campo.  It isn’t just pretty to look at; it’s the central focus of public life.

Once of the major museums in the city is the old hospital – the Santa Maria della Scala.  You’re not supposed to take pictures, but I snuck a few anyway (and was scolded). Here is the chapel – despite its spectacular decoration, not a major attraction in town; just one of many such things.  The old hospital museum also holds a particularly magnificent slaughter of the innocents – the subject of an earlier post.

On market day we went to the open-air bazaar that is held near the enormous fortezza (fortress) at the outskirts of town.  From here you can look back and see Siena from afar.  You can buy almost anything there, although food, clothing, and flowers were the bulk of it.

Late that evening we went to one of the nicer restaurants in Siena, Antica Osteria da Divo.  The restaurant is built in a structure occupied since Etruscan times; as you dine, you are surrounded by walls that predate the Romans.  It’s impossible not to wonder what those walls have seen.  And yes, the food and service was great, a suitable accompaniment to a day of taking in great visual art and architecture.

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