What inspires your travel?

For me, a number of different things have inspired my trips over the years: weird / hard to explain things (Easter Island and the Nazca lines, for example), history (Auschwitz, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima), beauty (New Zealand, Bhutan, China), etc, etc.  This particular stop on our Italy trip was inspired by a book. 

A couple of years ago Holly and I read the book series The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, by Herman Wouk, and in this story a good number of events take place in Siena, Italy, prior to the outbreak of World War II.  Because of our previous travels, we had mental images of many other places mentioned in the book, but for places in Italy, and specifically Siena, we had only our imaginations.  Holly and I wanted to stop in Tuscany anyway, so we decided to add a stop in Siena before heading on to Florence, and man, we’re so glad we did!

Siena is a medieval-era city, set on a hill and surrounded by walls, and is quite literally a living museum.  As I hope you’ll take away from the pictures, the city is absolutely gorgeous.  Even today as I was thinking about the city, I was still exploring around on Google Maps to find things we missed.  I feel like you could visit the city over and over, and it would continue to reveal things about itself to you.

About the pictures.  The picture above is one of my favorites from our entire trip.  On this particular morning I got up to shoot sunrise, and was greeted by mostly crystal clear skies – not what you want as a photographer!  Haha, but I was handed a neat view of the setting moon by the main cathedral that was a blast to photograph.  Below are a number of other images I collected as we wondered around the streets.  Holly and I were able to explore a number of towers and high points in the city, offering neat vantage points.

More next week!

–Dan Thompson