Siena and San Gimignano

We went on a bus tour today. We visited two towns in the Tuscan countryside. Tuscany is bit like like a state.
The first town was Siena. We went on a two hour walking tour. We heard all about the different areas of Siena. The town is broken into many sections. Each section is given a name like caterpillar, rhino, goose, hedgehog, dragon, eagle and heaps more. Amy wanted to be a caterpillar. John a goose and I wanted to be a rhino. Two times a year there is a big horse race around the town square and each section has a horse in the race. It is a big honour if your section's horse wins the race.
We visited the walled town of San Gimignano. There is a big brick wall all around the outside of the town. We had a gelato from the shop that has the best ice-cream in the world. In 2014 they won prizes for the world's best chocolate ice-cream. It was yummy. We walked around and looked at all the very old buildings. In the museum they had a model of the city from the 1300s. Each family, to show how wealthy they were, built a tower. The taller the tower the richer the family. There used to be 72 towers (in 1300) but now there are only 14 remaining.
We are going to Innsbruck in Austria (a different country) tomorrow. John and Amy want to go skiing. They have had a lot of snow there lately.

Here are two of the symbols for the different sections....the rhino and the caterpillar. They are all over the town.

This is the big square where they have the horse race.