The very next morning after we arrived, the group had to be up and out on the street by 6:00 am to get on a bus and ride for two hours to the city of Siena, where we toured several churches, watched a grand parade and generally hung around all day in anticipation of a horse race around the parameters of one of the piazzas.

Siena has something called a palio twice a year and our group was there to take part in the one held in July. The surrounding countryside is divided up into districts, 15 of them, and each district brings a horse to enter into the grand race. The young men dress in costumes from the days of Romeo and Juliet and they all parade through the center of town singing to get blessed by the priests from one of the windows in the front of the church. Later everyone gathers in the center of another piazza which is transformed into the race track. We stood in the center of this large "track" for hours waiting for everyone to get in there and then the horses and their riders made a long slow parade around the track to the starting point. People from the different districts would argue about whose horse was the best and the announcer made a great show of getting the animals started, with a couple of false starts of course. It was all pretty exciting but our group was very relieved when it was finally over -- well into the evening! The thing that impressed me the most I think was that after it was all over and we were leaving, there was practically no mess from all the thousands of people that spend almost an entire afternoon in a single area. Somewhere close to the middle of it all was a long table and some trash cans where vendors had been set up. All that was left was a hugh pile of plastic water bottles! The only people that actually threw any of their trash on the ground were from our group (I am sorry to say!) I thought that was pretty amazing after seeing all the food and beer bottle trash that is the end result of any American gathering.

The next weekend we visited the wonderful city of Florence , or you can go back to my Homepage .