Siena, Italy 1

Italy is a fantastic country, in all aspects. Especially Toscana (Tuscany) and the city of Siena lies near my heart of several reasons. My parents visited the city together with our American relatives (of Swedish-Italian origin) in 2002. To this story of hospitality and warmness you have to now the geography of Siena. The whole Tucsonan landscape has variation with a lot of hills and valleys. The city of Siena is no exception, rather the contrary. It is concentrated on a relatively small area, which have made the city government to prohibit tourists to take their cars inside the city. Instead you have to park your car a bit outside and then take the bus into the city. This was with other words what my parents and our relatives had to do. They went strolling around the medieval city, until quite late, when they feel an overwhelmingly hunger for Tuscan food (understandable). The problem was just that in all the restaurants that they went to were full of tourist. At last they went in to restaurants which certainly also was crowded, but two of men in the must have seen the despair in their eyes, because they squeezed in a little at their table making room for my parents. The men showed out to be no other then the major of Siena and the head of the police. They had a wonderful dinner, which must have lasted for quite a while, because when the dinner was over, my parents recognised that they had missed the last bus to the parking lot. No problem though. The head of the Siena police, offered to drive my father and the husband of my father’s cousin (hope you understood how I meant that we are related with the Americans) to the parking lot, although, he according to my parents, already had drank a few glasses of wine during the dinner. This whilst the women went with the major to the major’s office in the middle of Siena, studying the impressive pieces of art he kept in his possession (or at least the city owned).
Such a prove of hospitality would as far as would believe only happen in Italy.