This series is about our trip to Italy we took in September of 2026. We rented a car and traveled the “road less traveled”. Other pages in the series listed at the bottom of this page and will have links as I write them.

Day 7 has us leaving our lovely exchange student and her family. After a hearty breakfast and sad goodbyes with promises to see one another soon, we headed to Siena. We had made a conscious effort to stay off the tourist paths. So far, we had been successful and had seen very few tourists and especially very few American tourists. But, we were so close to Siena and knew it was a beautiful city. I am also a horse rider, so the lure of seeing the Piazza Del Campo, where the Palio di Siena horse race is held was strong. The race has ten horses, with bareback riders racing three times around the piazza. Even if the horse crosses the finish line first without the rider (its common for them to lose their riders), the horse wins the race.

We parked in a public parking lot not too far out of the city and walked into the center. Most cities in Italy have zones where you cannot drive without a special permit. There are signs indicating where but they are small and easy to miss and if you do drive there, you will get the unpleasant surprise of a large bill later.

We had missed the race by a few weeks so the piazza looked like the typical piazza in Italy except that it was concave with a lower center, for drainage, and was more of an irregular oblong shape than most. It was easy to imagine though the horses racing around the square.

This is a video I took from the center of the square.

After some lunch, we walked the town a bit. We then decided that as interesting as Siena was, it had way too many tourists and was too crowded for our taste. We had gotten a bit spoiled in our travels! So, we headed north. We had quite a ways to go before we reached our next HomeExchange and it would require a hotel stay along the way so it wasn’t a bad idea to get back on the road anyway. Before we continue the journey though, a few more pics of Siena!

We weren’t quite sure where we would stay but there were plenty of small towns along the way, so I searched Google Maps for a place while Dan drove. The landscape became filled with more industrial type towns filled with factories and heavy industry. I wish I took more pictures. You tend to take the “pretty” pictures of Italy but really all of it is interesting and should be preserved and shared.

We settled on the town of Carpi to stay based primarily on distance to our next location and because the airbnb reviews seemed good on the placed we picked. As we drove into town, it had an “odd” feel to it. Wasn’t quite sure if it was just that it felt run down and had some graffiti, it was more modern than we had been recently, or that there were not many people on the streets. But odd.

It was also an unsettling feeling because the airbnb host sent us a message along the way letting us know we needed to upload pictures of our passports to her website in order to register for our stay. It is typical to show or even hand over your passports when you stay in a hotel or hostel in Italy, but sending it to a site just didn’t feel right. She let us know that it was a self-check in though and was not monitored by a staff member so it was necessary. All the reviews were good and they had done the same so I went with it despite the off-settling feeling.

We parked in a lot a few blocks from the place and were lucky enough to get a “blue-lined” (blue lines mean free) as someone pulled out of the only available one as we circled the parking lot. Yeah! Something good! We had packed smaller bags to take the airbnb so we grabbed those and started walking. Again, the town was just quiet. Not many people on the streets or even cars. We turned down an alley and found the place. You had to enter a code to enter the lobby and then another code to open a lockbox at the actual door of the room. The room was actually nice and clean and even had air conditioning — a rare thing in Italy.

It was getting late, so we headed out to find a place to eat. Again – super quiet and not many places open. It felt like it shouldn’t be safe, but we did see teenage girls and women walking alone and looking comfortable with it so it must be okay. We walked to the main piazza. Nearly no one there and no restaurants at all! Just few tobacco shops and stores closed for the night. A scattering of people walked the square and sat on benches and nearly all of them were not Italian. After doing some googling, we found that about 16% of the population are foreign nationals, with Pakistan the most prevalent. It probably depends on where in Carpi you are because were we walked we saw very few Italians. It was interesting — it felt like we had stepped outside of Italy for the night. Again, I wish I had taken pictures.

We had just about given up and figured we’d just be hungry for the night, when we stumbled on a nice pizzaria. I didn’t take any pictures there except for part of the menu which was a common page at nearly every restaurant in Italy. The restaurants take allergies seriously and post each type of allergy that could be in the food item. This is the “legend” for them and then next to each menu item, it would list the corresponding number or numbers for any potential allergens.

So, all in all, the night ended well and the evening showed us a side of Italy we had not experienced before or expected. The airbnb was actually quite comfortable and clean and we got a good nights rest. On to Lake Garda tomorrow with some stops along the way!