4 Hours of Waiting, 3 Minutes of Horse Racing

I can sum up our first full day in Europe with about 4 words:

1) Hot
2) Crowded
3) Exciting
4) McDonald’s

Thanks to my 9:00 pm bedtime, I was all bright and shiny by 5:30 in the morning.  Luckily for Blake, I am nothing but considerate, so I let him sleep until 6:15 am, before waking him up with a thoughtful poke to the cheek.  In the 45 minutes that I was awake, I had googled “best cappuccino in Florence” and had a list of cafes for us to try in the next few days.

Of course, we were some of the only people on the street, but we drank our cappuccino and ate our pastries and started off towards the train station, where we needed to reserve our tickets to Munich for the next day.  There, we met my nemesis, Rude Italian Train Ticketer.  He rudely informed us that there was only one overnight train to Munich, despite our liar of a Eurorail Train Guide.  He had no patience for us, so I, of course, had no patience for him.  Either way, he won, and it looks like we have to head to Munich on a train during a time in which we should be laying down instead of sitting upright.  Hopefully we have improved our sleeping while sitting skills on the trip over here, because from 9:30 PM – 6:30 AM on July 4 we will be on a train in route to Munich.

After all that excitement, we boarded our bus to Siena.  I had big plans of watching the scenery, but ended up napping the entire trip.  Upon arriving in Siena, we immediately headed up the giant hill to get a look at the main cathedral.  Worried (for no reason, it turns out) that we would not have enough time to both tour it AND wait in the heat to see the Palio, we admired it from the outside, and I got this amazing shot of both Blake AND the cathedral.

Look! I got on a knee to take this picture because I am such a good photographer.

After exploring the city for a while and walking approximately 8 miles entirely up hill ( seriously, I feel it today.  Italians should have amazing butts with all that hill walking they do), we bought some pizza for lunch and ate it in the nearest doorway we could find.

Our favorite place to be, out of the sun.

After a while, we decided that we better hurry up and sit out in the sun and wait for the race or we might not get a good spot.  This proved to be a mistake.  First of all, it was one million trillion degrees outside.  Second of all, only the young people (of which I am not) waited in the sun for 4 hours for the race to start.  Everyone else piled in right before, and seemed to be just fine.  However, Blake and I are dumb, so we sat out in 100 degree weather on some cobble stone ground, sweating and waiting for the race to begin.

The water truck, which kept the dirt down and cooled down those of us who were sitting in the sun for hours.

Finally, at around 5:00, there was some activity occurring around the track.  Assuming the race was about to begin, Blake and I got ready picking our favorite mascots (side note:  the race pits the 17 neighborhoods of Siena against one another.  Each neighborhood is absolutely covered with flags displaying their colors and mascots.  These mascots are sub par.  I mean, there is a porcupine, a clam shell, a caterpillar, wood, and a fish, amongst others), the porcupine – me and the duck – Blake.  However, unbeknown to us,  we still had a 2.5 hour procession to sit through.  Thanks to our new friends, Francesco and Lizbeth, who had been sitting next to us the entire time and wanted to work on their English, we learned the meaning of each of the different groups who walked slowly by, throwing flags and wearing velvet.  I won’t bore you with all the facts, but I will show you this picture of a man in a mask with a hand coming out of his hat because it is awesome.

Weird!

Finally, after the longest most boring parade ever known to man, the horses lined up for the race.  And then there was about 10 faults, which caused the audience to yell out in anger.  Finally (seriously, FINALLY), the race began – and man, people were EXCITED!  You can hear my screaming in this video (I actually think it might be someone else, but who know.)

In about 3 minutes, the race was over.  I am pretty sure that Wood won, but there was no real way to tell.  Horses were running without riders, people were shouting obscenities, and men began crying.  And then violence began.  The man next to us began SOBBING with despair that his neighborhood’s horse did not win.  Other men joined him.  Still others began pushing us around, looking to fight someone.  Our new friend Francesco told us in a worried voice that we needed to exit the area quickly (we were right near the track, thanks to our awesome waiting abilities and therefore, a little too close to the action), so Blake and I worriedly started walking quickly to the bus station.  We then entered, what I can only describe as pandemonium.  There was blood on the ground and men running around punching people.  It was intense.  You can see all the blood on the ground and hear my bad-ass-ness in this video -

Needless to say, we made it out safe and passed out on our bus for the hour long trip back to Florence.

Oh yeah, and McDonald’s?  It was way too late, and we were way too tired, so we made the cultured decision to eat a quick dinner of McDonald’s near our hotel room.  It was the best big mac I have ever tasted.