la scelta

Sienas ancient tradition, Il Palio is approaching quickly and there has been a whole week of festivities. We went to the selection day. the horses are randomly assigned to each contrada and once they are assigned a horse there is no changing it.


behold Palazzo Pubblico with all the contrade bandiere. the bottom 10 are the ones that will participate in the race, the top 7 will be participating next month . unfortunately my beloved l'onda will not be racing this month.


got my self a l'onda flag and wore it as a head band. inspiration: margaret tata


a member of the chioccola--the snail--contrada whos biggest enemy is ironically tartuca--the turtle. i will chuckle to myself now.


why a horse of course.

liz and i rockin our bandiera, shes a supporter of tartuca...but we can still be friends, i guess.


the selection was really fun, there were so many people there and as each contrada came into il campo they were singing there sons. but my favorite part of the day was as l'oca was leaving torre started to beat them up there were fists flying everywhere as liz says torre are the slytherines of the bunch . here are some vids from the day for your enjoyment.

and they came marching into the piazza one by one singning their songs

start off with some trumpets it will build tension.

the selection, well a part of it anyhow.