Finally the day for Palio arrived ! Spectacular, even exceeded our expectations !
Had the morning at market town, Greve, stocked up on yummy fruit, vegies, meats, cheese and bought sandals for J and G. Cheap as chips! Jaz was so pumped to buy apples on her own. Fab pig sambos, cut straight off the pigs butt.
So the Palio afternoon... bit of a stress to start, taxi 45 mins late, so late to collect tix, streets packed with the parading contrades, which were wonderful though craig nearly got knifed, they didnt like us hurrying along to find the street to collect tix! Got them and went in. Woa, just in time, doors shut minutes after! Rock star seats, right on the corner... Little did we realize how eventful it would be! We were tucked in with other tourists, along with the local men down the front, emotions were running v Hot!!
2.5 hours of parades which were sensational, all the 17 contrades dressed in the traditional gear, along with 2 horses per contrade, the working horse and the racing one. Beautiful costumes, never mind the sore bum.
The race! A complete silence fell upon the huge crowd. Wow. All the horses were jostling to kick off , and bang, they were off.. No false starts! 90 secs of pure intensity. First lap, 2 jockeys overboard, then another (the leader), and the horses followed stamping all
over him. He was taken off in a stretcher... All happened 3 meters in front if us. Horse ran wrong way....shambles... ! The Goose contrade won, the italians went crazy!!
Our stand (the tourists) were all shell shocked! But the Italians just jumped the fence and went wild.
Bettsy and I took off to local bar and joined in the festivities with the locals , then grabbed some ossi bucco. What a night!!