hi itislinette now. in siena we have taken it easy, paying no museum admissions, spending time eating elato on Il Campo, the town center, sitting in bars with coffees in the sun and waking up embarassingly late. Today I tried to go to Saint Catherine’s sanctuary, a 13th century girl who traveled to Paris to convince the Pop to comeback to Rome. She grew up in Siena, and her parents were wool-dyers. Her house has been a site for pilgrimages since the 1400s. The have, according to guidebooks, a finger bone and her head as a relic there. yes,her head! Now that we have been here for almost 2 weeks, I have seen many a Saint’s arm bone and several fingers encased in churches, but never a head.I have to admit that my desire to visit the sanctuary was not of the purest intent. It was free as well as incredibly interesting and strange.A head? It made me think about my friend Monica’s father’s shrunken head from his days as a Colombian salesman in the Amazon. (Not her father’s head, but the shrunken head thta was kept in her family kitchen cabinet in a teacup). Anyway, we went to the sanctuary where I immediately felt horrible when we were greeted by a nun and the place was so fullof pious worship that I immediately knew that I would not be asking the nun where the head was. Mark said that I was a horrible person and that he could tell I was just scoping the place out for the head and I felt genuinely bad about it.I am still full of questions.what was the Pope doing in Paris anyway, that he needed convincing to come back? When did they get the head? Does that mean that someone cut the head of a saint off or was she a sketeton already by the 1400s? Mark and I are going to dinner now in the restaurant below the room we are renting. bye bye, Linette