Palio! (Abbiamo vinto!!!)

August 16, 2007

I wake up around 9 and head down to the breakfast. Wow. So, most places have a tendency to exaggerate their breakfasts on their websites. I.E. – Athens Backpackers. Great place, but seriously, only hardboiled eggs and toast for breakfast. This place did not exaggerate AT ALL. Delicious fruit juice, variety of Italian meats and cheese, rolls, some delicious, sweet croissant looking things, a variety of cakes, fruit cocktail, and cappuccinos or espressos on order. A-frickin-mazing. After breakfast, I head back up to the room, get Danielle up, who then runs downstairs quickly to grab something to eat and comes back up.

At this point, Sophie leaves with the other girls to go find a grocery store. Danielle and I read for a while longer, then decide to go do laundry. Problem. Sophie took both room keys. Ooops! So, we do what any sensible person would do. We decide to break open the bottle of wine and chocolate bar we bought last night! Sure, it’s only noon, but, what the hey, we’re in Europe!

About and hour and a half later Sophie wanders in, and once she realizes she had both keys, apologizes profusely. Charlie shows up and he, Danielle and I head out to grab something to eat. We grab sandwiches from a place down the street, then wander up and get some more gelato (Danielle is addicted now…Ron better figure out how to make some!). On our way back, we decide Charlie has to buy some wine, so we stop at this little shop with wine and cheese. They have this deal, bottle of red with a huge hunk of pecorino cheese for 10 euro. We start chatting with the lady that runs it, telling her we’ll be here for one month and she invites us into her basement which is part of the old Etruscan settlement that was there! SO cool! It was part of the water system of the city. Simply amazing. We come back up and she tells us the history of it all and then invites us back another time for wine and cheese tasting. Then we head back to the room to watch the Palio on TV (I realize it’s a once in a lifetime thing, but seriously, did NOT want to fight those crowds, and we wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyway). When we arrive, Laura has also arrived, so then we have to talk to Roberto about the fact that he “never saw her”…SUCH a good man! So, we head upstairs and watch all the parades, then the horses come on the track. Everyone is going NUTS! The order that they are lining up in are read out, as each is announced, their contrada cheers. Then we wait. One horse does not want to get into line. So, we wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, it’s like a blur, the horse gets into line and BAM they’re off. There’s seven of us in our hotel room going CRAZY cheering for Unicorn. Once around and Unicorn is in the lead!! Holy crap! We’re going nuts… “come on Unicorn!!!” Two times around, uh oh, red and white team is gaining on him… “COME ON!!!!” Third time….man this is getting TENSE!!! We’re screaming…then suddenly, it’s over…WE WON!!! ABBIAMO VINTO!!! Completely giddy we run downstairs to go grab a seat at a restaurant before they fill up. While everyone grabs the table, Roberto is kind enough to let me use his computer to buy Danielle a ticket from Siena to Milan the next day. After this I join everyone for some dinner. I decided on something light, so only got some melon and prosciutto, but again, simply delicious. The fruit in Europe is amazing. Because they don’t ship it three thousand miles right after it’s picked, it’s actually picked right at the height of ripeness, so there is just SO much flavor. So, after endlessly irritating the staff at the restaurant with our indecisiveness and English, Danielle and I head back to the hotel while the rest of the young crew headed out to party the night away.