The Palio has now come and gone, and there is much excitement among our students and staff because Civetta, the contrada of our on-site coordinator Vincenzo, has won. This is Civetta's first win in thirty years and, needless to say, there has been much rejoicing. If you have ever witnessed to Palio firsthand then you can imagine how strong the reaction was among the people of Civetta; for those who have never seen it then I don't think it is possible to convey in words exactly what it was like. Let me just say that I have never seen such rejoicing (or so many emotional grown men) ever in my life. The race itself was very exciting: there were the usual problems with getting the horses to line up in the correct order (Aquila's horse wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the line up and Giraffa's horse wanted to face the opposite direction) and there were several false starts. This meant that the race that did not start at 7:30pm as it was supposed to, and the crowd and the announcers were becoming very agitated the closer it got closer to 8:30pm, since that is when it begins to get dark and since the horses cannot run after dark they would then have to put it off until the next day. But luckily, at about 8:20pm everything fell into place and the race began. Two of the horses lost their riders (including Aquila, the horse that was so fussy before the race) but everyone else made it through just fine, with Civetta claiming the victory.

I should say that I wasn't feeling very well Sunday afternoon, so I decided not to cram myself into the Campo to witness the race in person. Instead, I crammed myself into a crowd near the Duomo to watch the parade in the afternoon, and then I went back to the residence and watched the race on TV with two of our porters. It was fun to watch with two Sienese women and see how involved they were in the whole thing, even just watching it on TV. But even though I did not attend the actual race, I did go to the Saturday evening trial run, and I wanted to post some of my pictures and videos from both events but I forgot to bring my flash drive with me today, so I will have to post them tomorrow! So for now, here is a link to an article where you can view some pictures of the race and the aftermath, just click on the pictures and a slideshow will open.