Well as most of you are aware by this point, I don’t write many of these as Jordan has much better literary skills than I, but here goes anyway.
We woke fairly early this fine morning after another rainy night, the streets were wet but not rain was to be found. We caught our train at about 8:30am and made the 90 minute jaunt to picturesque Siena.
Not long after our arrival and subsequent journey into town, we discovered the ancient festival “The Palio” had begun today. The Palio is “THE” Italian festival, it take place over a period of approximately one week. With out going into too much detail, the festival is one that dates back to 1260, after a battle won by the Sienese. Siena is divided into 17 Cotradas (or districts), only 10 districts are represented by a horse in a bareback race of tree laps around the square on a packed dirt track. It began with 10 horses this morning with each one being given a rank according to its finish place. The at a ceremony that looked much like the “High Noon” shoot-out at O.K. Corral, the residents of each district and tourists don colors of the community and march in the square chanting and singing to ‘taunt’ the other districts. Only once the square is COMPLETELY packed with people do the “draw” the name of the jockey that will ride which horse. Then after an afternoon spent traveling around town in parades, chanting and taunting the other districts some more, the ‘chosen’ jockeys on their ‘chosen’ horses do a practice race. This happens only after ALL of the people fill the square to overflowing again; luckily we learned that the restaurants offer seating in stands and/or a balcony above the square. We were fortunate enough to view this spectacle from the second floor balcony above a lovely restaurant. Once the ‘race’ was over, we made our way to the train and headed for Florence.
Sorry for the lack of pictures lately, we will be uploading pictures once we get to Venice (hopefully) as the connection here keeps timing out every time we try to upload.
Th Th Th Th That’s all folks,
TB
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