Palio is on! The town is full of chanting, marching locals.
We took an easy travel day consisting of a flight from Madrid, a train to the bus station and a 3 hour bus ride. All ran smoothly, although we were impatient to get off the bus and stretch our legs by the end of the day.
We were here to see the Palio, a horse race that has been held since the middle ages. Each of horse/riders represent one of the Contradas of the town. There is an elaborate selection process that selects ten out of the seventeen Contradas that will be in the race and then subsequently selects and matches the riders to a horse. The craziness of this race lies in the fact that the horse assigned to the rider is random and the race is ridden bareback over a dirt track in the central piazza. The amusement is the rivalries between the town’s Contradas that involves everyone in town from old to very young.
Our week was spent watching the selection of the horses, the marching through the streets, the banquets and the blessing of the horses, along with watching the flag bearers waving flags, the girls chanting and in general, the mayhem caused by congestion of the tourists and townspeople in the streets.
We considered the trial races of the Palio to be the most amusing to watch. During a trial where the horse and riders are getting used to each other, often one team would far outstrip the pack at a blistering pace to the great glee of that team’s Contrada, while the others teams trotted around the track just getting used to their horse. Then later in the day that winning Contrada would have extra spirit marching through the streets singing and chanting.
The final race on the otherhand was a rather somber affair, where viewers had to get into their positions multiple hours before the race started and then after much slow (very slow) pagentry, the race started and was finished in no time at all. As the losing Contradas left the piazza, some with teenage girls in full tears, only one Contrada was exuberant, the Unicorns. Later that evening, the Unicorn Contrada had a small pile of men marching with their green flags and drums through the streets until 3 or 4 in the morning. Mind you, the rest of the Unicorns were at a makeshift banquet celebrating into the wee hours. We were rooting for the Super Snails, but their victory was not to be.
All was not just the Palio for us, we did find some outstanding Pici pasta, a nice thick hand rolled version from Tuscany. Along with the weather, the food, race watching and general festivities made for an amazingly enjoyable week.
At the end of our week, we misjudged how crowded it would be leaving the day after the races to head on the train to the Pisa airport. As in, there were no crowds at all. It was a warm, calm, quiet morning at the train station, and so we ended up at the Pisa airport a full four hours before our flight. This became an annoying situation. The Pisa airport has no seating in the check-in area, but only provides seats after you check-in, which, of course, is unobtainable for early arrivals because you can’t check-in until 50 minutes before your flight. So, what to do, what to do?!
Hmm, we tried sitting outside, the ground next to the building is sort of an ashtray, so that didn’t work. We tried sitting on one of the stone benches outside that held only 1 1/4 people, so after a few glares at each other, we decided that didn’t work. We considered sitting on the grass, but it the temperature outside was blistering in direct sunlight. So, we ended up standing around for 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
The airport watch hand slowly clocked around and eventually graced us with lunch time, where we crowded up to the counter and ordered up a fine hot pressed panini sandwich and two drinkable espressos… where… in true Italian fashion, we had to eat standing up at a counter. Despite standing up for 3 hours, the joy of getting a damn good sandwich cheered us up, which then helped us stand through another 45 minute long line to get checked-in. Once we actually saw seating, we only had 5 minutes to sit. Overall though, the experience made us extremely pleased to get on that plane and to finally sit down.
