Monterosso to Siena

day 14 – giorno quattordici

It was still windy and kind of cloudy this morning when we left Monterosso, but the weather forecast promised another beautiful day. Sigh… Might just have to go back someday. We backtracked the way we arrived, back on the train for the short ride back to Levanto and back on the bus.

Not too long on the bus and we started seeing the Tuscan countryside we see in movies. Our midway stop today was the hilltown of San Gimignano, one of most intact walled towns. Also, as it turns out, a great town to do a little shopping. We just stopped for a few hours, enough time to do a quick tour of the town and grab a bite to eat.

Tara and Mom are on the light lunch train so I guess I am too. Probably for the best when we’ve got big dinners planned too. It also works out great because it gives us more time to walk around and see things! We headed straight up to a viewpoint on top of a high wall which was pleasantly quiet. It seems like even though there were a ton of tourists there, not all that many ventured up that high. For the most part, we just wandered around the tiny city. It was impossible to get lost, so we did our best.

Eventually we doubled back and made sure to get gelato at this little shop in the main square. There was another gelateria across the way that boasted “the best gelato in the world”… Yeah right. The doorway to the place we went was bordered by awards they’d received. According to Sarah, they’ve actually been asked to stop entering competitions because they always win. And for good reason! We’ve been to a few by this point and this place definitely had some special flavors. I got passionfruit, blackberry lavender, and tiramisu. Drool. It was SOOOO good.

Then we went back to wandering all over the place. Found another cool panoramic viewpoint.

Eventually we ended up back on the main drag and meandered our way in the direction of the meeting point. As I said, I think everyone did a little shopping here cause this place was stuffed with cute little artisan shops. Mom found a potter at work right in his little shop. Plus there were lots of places with wild boar meats. We also found this little fiber art store with lots of beautiful things. We were very nearly late to meet the group because we were busy looking at (and buying) things!

Back on the bus and a short while later we arrived at our hotel in Siena. We arrived around 4 pm so we had an hour to get settled before meeting up again for happy hour and then an orientation tour with a local guide.

A huge part of our tour was learning about the Palio, a horse race that usually takes place twice a year. It’s really an insane tradition but hearing our guide talk about it, I was actually getting a little amped up. In Siena the neighborhoods are called contradas and each contrada has a name, emblem, colors, etc like a sports team would. And every Aug and Sept, ten of the 17 contradas participate in a horse race which takes place in Il Campo, the city square. The restaurants all take in their outdoor seating and bleachers are put up all the way around the outside and the inner part is fenced off and literally packed with people. They do put down a sand/soil combination on the road so the horses aren’t running on stone. The Palio is like the Superbowl on steroids in one pretty small city. Everyone is extremely proud of their contrada and fights often break out between the best of friends if they’re from rival contradas. Even spouses that are from different contradas will separate a few days before the race so that they don’t fight. After the race is over, everyone goes back to being great friends. Crazy.

The contrada that wins pretty much parties for 6 months straight. Until the drawing happens for the next race. The unfortunate thing is that the jockeys are hired, they’re not necessarily from the contradas, and they can be bought/bribed. Each contrada has their own church which is heavily decorated. The main doors of these churches are only opened once or twice a year: to bless the horse that is going to participate in the Palio. The relatively small church is overflowing so the priest is literally yelling so everyone can hear. They walk the horse up to the front of the church and it gets blessed, “You (horse’s name), go and come back a winner!”. At 3 pm, the horse gets blessed. Four hours of parading around in traditional costumes. Then the horse race begins at 7 pm and is over in just a minute or so. All of that preparation and anticipation explodes after the race. And the best part? It doesn’t matter if the jockey stays on the horse, the horse is what wins the race. That’s why the horse is blessed but not the jockey.

 A very brief fun fact: there’s only 3 ft of foundation under this ~300 ft tower. I guess Siena is built on much more stable ground than Pisa!

Our walking tour continued into the Selva contrada, the winner of one of this year’s Palio. They are clearly still celebrating. The huge horse banner hanging on the archway should be explanation enough. They’ve got their flags lining their streets and many celebrations going on every few days.

This door with the horse knocker is actually the stable, but the horse is only there for a few days prior to the race.

This is the Selva church and storage below where they keep all of the past banners of the Palios they’ve won. Quite the collection, I have to say.

The icing on the cake was a dinner prepared by a few families of the Selva contrada. We sat at one long table in their community building. This was another wonderful multi course meal. We started with an appetizer plate with a few kinds of meat, a hunk of cheese and a couple pieces of bruschetta (pronounced broos-keta). Then came a pasta with red sauce, then meat and potatoes, and finally for dessert we had this awesome chocolate-covered mound of frozen goodness.

There was quite a lot of wine passed around of course and there was a very strong dessert wine served at the end of the meal with biscuits. Darn Norm, he came from the far end of the table and gave me his little cup of dessert wine… I just can’t leave the table without cleaning my plate and finishing my beverages!

We got to enjoy a beautiful sunset during dinner and are very lucky to even get this experience. It’s not like you can be any old tourist and walk into a contrada and get them to make you a meal. Definitely another reason to be super appreciative of the planning that goes into these Rick Steves tours and glad we chose to do it!!