Siena and San Gimignano

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Today our school planned a trip for us to the small towns of Siena and San Gimignano (S.G.). Both are very close to Florence and very accesible by bus, which we took.

Siena is a picturesque Italian town (as shockingly most of them actually are) with rolling hills and extremely old buildings. Upon our arrival we got a brief tour of the city from one of the teachers and learned all about the Palio, which I mislabeled in a picture. It actually occurs on JULY 2nd this year, not June.
A little side note about the Palio. My friend was lucky enough to go (I had two classes and couldnt skip both of them) and he told me all about it. Apparently, of the 17 or so neighborhoods in Siena, only 8 actually get to run the race. These are chosen randomly and if your neighborhood is not chosen to run, it is now your job to make sure your rival does not win. At the beginning of the race, the 8 spots are chosen, randomly, and the race begins. Or does it? Everytime a horse false starts, they reshuffle the order of the 8 spots. So if your horse is not in a good spot, or a rival horse is in a good spot, you do everything you can to spook them into false starting. Apparently this process took about 1 hour before the race actually started. As you can see in the picture, it's not the safest place for a horse race, but this year only one horse/rider fell. That horse, free of its rider (they all ride bareback, by the way), decided it wanted to run the other way on the track. So for the remaining two laps (there are 3 total) the other riders had to dodge this horse. In the end, the Goose neighborhood won and threw a huge party for everyone else. For more info on the Palio, and I recommend looking into it, wikipedia is your friend.
The rest of Siena was great, with one of the most beautiful cathedrals I've seen so far, inside and out. As we walked up to the cathedral for the first time, two men playing their accordions played a Phantom of the Opera like song which made the whole situation a surreal experience. After lunch in a cafe with calzones bigger than my head, we left for S.G.

S.G. is a much smaller, higher up hill town with incredible views. We didn't get to spend a lot of time there, but we did take a lot of pictures of the surrounding hillside and that's where we found the World Champion Gelato. More pictures will be uploaded once I get home, since it took over an hour to put up the 19 pictures that are on the site now. Now you can relax and look forward to entries on Pisa and Lucca, Venice, Rome, Pompeii and Paris (which I am heading to soon, since I am actually writing this on July 5th). Until then, hope all is well.

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