Dragons, Snails, and Caterpillars...Oh My

July 1, 2009

We arrived in Civitavecchia, Italy (pronounced chiveet-ah-vek-ia) at sunrise the next morning. As usual, the rumbling sounds of the slowly maneuvering boat woke me up too early in the morning, but I did get a pretty awesome picture of the sunrise before going back to bed. I woke up and got ready for the day before breakfast because I had to meet my traveling group at 9:15 a.m. to start our journey to Siena and San Gimignano.

From Civitavecchia to Siena is a three and a half hour bus ride which, in other words, means a three and a half hour naptime. Something about those buses just puts everyone to sleep, even if it’s only a 20 minute ride. In my defense, I did try to stay awake because everything looked so beautiful and I didn’t want to miss it. There were sunflower fields everywhere, and every so often there would be a cute little stone village perched on top of a plateau or high cliffs, elevated above the vast fields of flowers. We also saw a couple of old Roman aqueducts. Tuscany really is gorgeous; my eyes just couldn’t stay open.

When we finally reached Siena, everyone was relieved to finally get off the bus. Our guide just seemed to have no idea where we were or how to get into the main part of the city. You would think the tour guide wouldn’t need to stop to ask for directions, but after we went around in a circle…twice…we finally found the entryway. Everyone was starving, but like all SAS tours, they have to take the entire group to the meeting point first so that everyone knows exactly where to meet up at designated times. Along the way we strolled through narrow streets lined with tall medieval stone buildings that had been decorated with colorful flags. As we walked, we scoped out the restaurants for future reference.

At the meeting point, the guide told us to take 40 minutes of free time. Everyone dispersed looking for the nearest restaurant. Claire, Sam, and I almost went to a couple of sidewalk cafés, but they would take too long and were a little pricey. Eventually, we returned to this pizza place we had passed on the way and had some delicious Italian pizza for one Euro per slice. It was awesome. I had a prosciutto and mozzarella slice which was delicious. After pizza we prowled for the best gelateria (aka- ice cream place). I had a scoop of hazelnut and it was fantastic. I don’t know what they do to Italian ice cream to make it so much better, but everyone should make it that way. We sat on a bench by the window and polished off our cones before meeting up with the group.

After meeting up with the guide and the group, another local guide led us to the Piazza del Campo which is the main square of Siena. It hosts a series of shops and cafés that line the exterior along with the city hall. In the center of the piazza was a fountain and a large blocked off space which would host the crowd that would ensue the next day for the shortest horse race in the world, the Il Palio. Siena is actually known as the “City of Il Palio” because of this race.

The Il Palio is held on July 2^nd and August 16^th of each year, and we were actually in town on July 1^st to witness the preparations. Basically, the city is divided into 17 neighborhood districts which all compete against each other in this horse race. They each hire a jockey to lead their neighborhood to victory, and each neighborhood has a specific flag displaying their quirky mascots. Some of the mascots include: the snails, dragons, rhinos, geese, turtles, and caterpillars. Apparently, the geese hold the record for the most wins, but the dragons were favored to win this year. Flags of each district were hung everywhere, and people were representing their ‘hoods by wearing the flags as scarves around their necks. After the race, the winner’s flags are the only ones that are able to remain flying.

The tightly packed sand that is brought in to cover the piazza is a very specific kind of dirt that coined the name “Siena” for the town. The yellowish-tan color of this dirt is referred to as the color “Siena” to the rest of the world. On the day of the race the horses are blessed in neighborhood churches, tourists and locals crowd into the center ring of the square as well as on the outside skirts of the piazza, and a series of parades march through the streets. When it comes time for the race, the favored horse and rider are able to start whenever they please. This year the dragons decided to make everyone wait an extra hour and a half before starting. This medieval horse racing tradition consists of only four laps around the square of the Piazza del Campo, and it usually lasts less than two minutes time. The race is anything goes- no rules. Jockeys can use the whips on each other, and even if a horse finishes the race without its jockey it still wins the title for the neighborhood. Later on, I heard that the towers had taken the victory and that the jockey of the favored district (the dragons) had to be carried out of the area because I guess a bunch of people were angry about how he wasted time before starting the race. The race this year only lasted 72 seconds.

After viewing the piazza and hearing the history of the race we took a walking tour of the city where we saw a number of medieval buildings, narrow winding streets, and churches- some with really interesting frescos on the ceilings. One of the banks we saw had these creepy little sculptures of heads of old men poking out from the top floor. The sides of buildings still had large metal horse loops from the middle ages that were used to tie horses to the buildings. At one point, a parade of the dragons strolled past us with some guys decorated in green, gold, and purple drumming on big bass drums while carrying their district’s flag.

Funny story: On the side of one building I saw one of those yellow caution signs with a stick figure man slipping off of a ledge. Someone had taken a sharpie and written in “This is Sparta,” as well as another stick man kicking this person off the ledge. I found it pretty entertaining. I’m it was an American who wrote it.

The coolest thing we saw on the tour was The Duomo, an Italian Romanesque cathedral which was striped in green and white on all sides except for the front façade which was intensely decorated with sculpture, frescos of the Virgin Mary, and elaborate arches. The intricate architecture of the building was topped off by a large dome which came to a point with a golden sphere holding a gold cross. When this gold structure was last cleaned last month, they found a small note hidden inside the sphere that basically said, “We were here and cleaned this steeple,” and listed two names and the date, which turned out to be from about 300 years ago. Our guide said stuff like this happens all the time in Siena. People will move a brick or something and find notes or artifacts from hundreds of years ago.

History Lesson: St. Catherine of Siena was the first woman to show stigmata and actually be accepted by the community for having these holy marks on her skin. Most women would be considered witches instead. She would routinely perform public exorcisms which was an extremely uncommon occurrence for her time. The stairs leading up to The Duomo have a painted cross on one of the steps where it is believed St. Catherine fell and knocked out her tooth. I know, it’s a very random fact.

After visiting another church and having some free time to buy souvenirs, we loaded back onto the bus to head towards San Gimignano. But it wasn’t quite that simple. One girl hadn’t made it back to the bus. She had left our group early on in the tour to explore the city on her own, promising to meet up with the group at the end of the tour. We waited about 20 minutes where the bus was supposed to pick everyone up at the outskirts of town before we drove five more minutes down the road to the tour bus check out station. I guess SAS had been trying to get in touch with her in the meantime and managed to talk to her on her cell phone. She had made the mistake of meeting at the wrong church and said she was taking a taxi straight to where our bus was parked. We waited another 20 minutes or so before our guide got a call from the girl. She said she was just going to take a train back to Civitavecchia; so we had waited on her for 45 minutes, delaying our trip, and she just decided not to meet up with us after all. So this made the trip way behind schedule.

It was about an hour bus ride to San Gimignano from Siena, and we reached the city right when it was nearing sundown. The blue skies were slowly turning purple on the horizon as it neared twilight. As we walked up the steep sidewalk to enter the hilltop town we were graced with this amazing picturesque view of the surrounding landscape full of vineyards and green farmlands. It was the stereotypical picture of Tuscany, but so much better in person.

We entered the town of San Gimignano through a huge stone archway and proceeded to explore the streets that were lined with old stone buildings. Occasionally we would stumble upon a really great view through alleyways or around a corner. As we were walking everyone couldn’t help but notice how quiet it was here. There weren’t any cars in the streets or loud noises coming from the buildings; it was just calm and peaceful.

Claire, Sam, and I decided to stop at one of the restaurants in the main piazza for a snack before the ride back. We ate at a table outside and split a bottle of rosé wine as we munched on a caprese salad. It was very relaxing, and even in the more crowded piazza you could still tell how quiet and peaceful the town was. It was definitely a completely different atmosphere from the busy crowds of Siena that were anticipating the Il Palio.

We were running late to get back to the bus, but we kept seeing SASer’s walking back towards the town in the opposite direction from where they should have been headed to catch the bus. Eventually, we found out that everyone was going back to find a bathroom because our driver wasn’t planning on stopping for the entire three and a half hour trip back to Civitavecchia. We turned around and followed their lead, but then got distracted. One of the SASer’s mentioned a gelateria that was just up the hill that was supposedly amazing. It had actually won the award for “Best Gelato in the World” four years in a row…this wasn’t something that could be passed up. We had the choice of bathroom or gelato…and we chose gelato. Haha. I don’t regret it at all either because it was the best ice cream I’ve ever had. All three of us got the tiramisu flavor, and it was amazing- a perfect end to the day.

The guide complained a little bit about us being late to the bus, but it was so worth it. I slept the entire ride back to the ship, and even though Claire and I had planned to go out in CivitavecchiaRome and experienced a pretty intense thunderstorm, but they said it was awesome to see it rain over the Colosseum. I hit the sack after that because I had to meet for another field program the next day at 8:45 a.m. Day one in Italy was very busy, but fun and when we got back, we were just too exhausted to do anything. We did run into our friends who had stayed in town at the gangway and listened to everyone’s different stories from the trips they had taken that day. Most people had gone into definitely beautiful.