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Published: August 18th 2006
Hello from Italia! Italy sure has been having a fun year, eh?(sorry, been hanging around with Canadians) They hosted the Olympics and won the World Cup. Maybe I should have come here earlier. Meh, anyways, I flew to Milan from Seville on Tuesday and went straight to Siena to meet up with Shael, a Canadian dude I met during San Fermin, and to experience Il Palio. Siena is divided into 17 districts called contrade and twice a year ten of them compete in a bareback horse race (Il Palio) around the main square in Siena (the Campo). So on Wednesday I gathered along with something like 40,000 people in the campo to watch all the men of the contrade parade around wearing medieval tights and wigs and waving colorful flags. The horses came out and the race began. The Palio is much more than a race though. The contrade have enemies and they make huge bets and make agreements to sabotage horses and things like that. There is a lot of pride involved with a such a long history (this is a tradition from medieval times!!!). It was really exciting seeing the all flag throwing and marching through the streets and
Selva
Winning contradathe drum beating and the celebrations. It's hard to believe they do this twice a year.
Yesterday Shael and I visited Pisa. We spent about five hours taking ridiculous pictures of ourselves in increasingly innovative poses involving the tower (eventually they will be posted). We had dinner in a touristy restaurant and Shael had the Menu Turistica. It wasn't very good.
After saying bye to Shael today I headed out to Florence. I haven't done anything yet so I'll keep you posted. The Duomo is really amazing. I've seen it before but I couldn't stop staring at it today. I need to stop eating so much pizza. I'll never stop eating gelati though... Ok bye!
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