Museum Hopper

to fill some time in our day in san gimignano, jason and i decided to check out the museum of torture .  i think this is probably the weirdest museum i have ever been to, even more than the museum of sex in new york city.   the museum layout is fairly straightforward and can be viewed in almost any order.  it is primarily laid out with a description and the torture device in question.  they are somewhat clustered according to when they were used (i.e. the electric chair is near the gas chamber).   the museum was fairly informative, but just not very creative.  i did learn about some new methods of torture (iron maiden anyone?), but some of the information was fairly common place. after about 30 minutes, i did finally have to leave.  it was giving me a bit of the creeps and i needed to get into the sunlight.  jason did go to the second museum, which is included in the ticket.  he spent about 45 minutes in that museum as well. ...

we stopped at the museum of wine in san gimignano.  it was about three rooms and a tasting room.  one of the rooms was very helpful.  it had a video regarding the wine making process and the history of the region.   we also really enjoyed the wine tasting room.  we tasted four different wines for 6 EUR.  two reds and two whites.  we really enjoyed tasting the two white wines from san gimignano.  they were like a crisp pinot grigio.  we brought three bottles of it back to detroit.  it was something different from what we have seen here in the US.  we had thought we were getting it for free since we offered to pay for it at the beginning.  well, it turns out we were paying for it when we were done?  oh well.  it was the most generous pours we had anywhere for a tasting.   the sommelier was very helpful in offering recommendations on where to go purchase the wine and knowledgeable about the different local wines ...

our first stop in san gimignano was the museo civico, which is in the base of the largest tower.  we bought the combined ticket! we went up to the tower first to beat all the other tourists up there!  the view of the town is fantastic.  all the other towers are visible as well as the surrounding countryside.  it was a very unusual stairwell for an old tower as in it was fairly wide and looked as though the stairs had been added in the last 50 years!  i loved seeing the town square from up above.   the museum was at the base of the tower.  the frescos outside the museum are fantastic.  the items within the museum are not very impressive.  the most impressive items within the museum were actually discovered a few years ago as beautiful frescos.  part of the museum was even under construction.   i could not believe that these frescos were outside for so many years.  they are finally covered with plexiglass! t...

jason and i visited the museo archeologico in san gimignano, italy, as part of a combination ticket when we were there on our honeymoon. as part of the tower climb ticket, we decided to spend an extra couple of euros to get access to the other museums in the city.  as i suspected, this part of the museum was not necessarily worth the trek to the other part of town. the museum was comprised of a few different rooms with different archaeological relics.  there were lots of fragments of pottery and relics from the area.  unfortunately, it was just collections of pottery with little explanations in english or stand-out pieces.   we did like these jugs from the representative pharmacy.  i loved them as examples of beautiful tuscan pottery. overall, we could have skipped this museum and been just fine! time in museum: 20 minutes times visited: 1 overall: B-