We've had pretty good luck with the weather so far on our trip. A rainy day on the island of Hawaii (where is rains 300 days a year), a bit of rain in Beijing, and the first night in Paris and Rome, but not heavy in either case. It looked like our luck finally ran out, because as we checked in for our Tuscany tour it was raining heavily.
The first stop on the tour was the town of Siena. In the Middle Ages Siena was a rival of Florence, although our guide (from Florence) said it was kind of one sided with Siena wanting to be a rival but Florence not caring much because Siena was much weaker. He also joking told us not to listen to the Sienese guide, so maybe the rivalry still exists.
Luckily the rain had stopped by the time we got to Siena, our guide handed us over to the Sienese guide who took us on a walking tour of the town. It only has about 50,000 people so you can cover the highlights fairly quickly. One of their claims to fame is the oldest operating bank in the world is there, Banca Monte die Paschi di Siena, continuously operating since 1472.
Their other claim to fame is the Palio di Siena which a horse race that takes place in the city. It takes place in the Piazza del Campo, which is the central square in the city. As you can see from the pictures it is not a flat square and not really square shaped either. The race has been run since the 17th century.
The race takes place each year with one horse representing each neighborhood in the city. However only 10 horses can run and there are 17 neighborhoods, so 7 are left out. The racers are the 7 left out from the previous race plus three of the remaining 10 drawn by lot. By the way the neighborhoods are ancient, all composed of a region inside the old city walls. There are various rivalries and alliances between the neighborhoods. The Palio is the biggest event of the year, so it is a huge deal for each neighborhood participating.
The horses are trained outside the city, then 10 are picked and assigned to the neighborhoods by random lot. The horse assignment ceremony is an emotional event with the contingents from the various neighborhoods cheering or weeping, depending of whether they get a good or bad horse. The horse is then taken to a special stable inside the neighborhood, and the day of the race it is taken into the neighborhood's church to be blessed.
The race is three laps around the Piazza del Campo and takes about 90 seconds. They put dirt down for the track so the horses are not running on cobblestones. There are no starting gates, instead just a rope that is dropped. The starting positions are also drawn by lot, however there are basically no rules. We saw a video of the race and it is pretty chaotic. The jockeys literally jockey for position in the starting area and try to disrupt each other, even whipping each other with their crops. Sometimes horses end up facing the wrong way. There is no waiting until everyone is ready, when the starting judge says “go” the race starts, so if you are facing the wrong way there is no time to recover in a 90 second race. The winning neighborhood has a giant celebration and parade afterwards.
After we left Siena we headed to an organic farm for a tour and lunch. The farm specializes in wine, olive oil and saffron, but they also have some animals. They told us the lunch was 95% from ingredients from their farm.
As expected Yanmei really enjoyed this part of the tour.
Lunch started with bruschetta, followed by fresh penne pasta in a ragu sauce, then some meats (cold salami, etc.) and cheeses, and finally cookies for dessert. There was a wine pairing with each course, including a strong dessert wine you were meant to dip the cookies into. It sounds good, but it was just okay to me. Yanmei makes better bruschetta, and the pasta was good but lacking in flavor a bit, maybe they skimped on the seasoning to keep the 95% stat. The best part to me was the cheese. The view was nice though, we had a view of the medieval town of San Gimignano.
San Gimignano was our next stop after lunch.
To be continued…
-David
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