Today’s word is “sudare”. Sono sudata. The sweating is easy, but remembering this word is hard…don’t know quite why. To illustrate, at least twice today I have told someone “I am a sweaty guy”. Sudato. Sudata. Mamma mia!
But whatever problems the heat is imposing, I am having no issue adjusting to the pace here. It settles my soul.
I’m sitting in the Ristorante Spadaforte in Siena, on the shady side of Il Campo, if there is such a thing today. Bright white gargoyle-wolves look down on the tourists, snarling in the heat. There is a crowd clustered in the shade of the enormous, narrow tower…anxious to climb thousands of stairs at 43°C. They move over as the shadow shifts on the red bricks.
Il Campo feels like the center of the universe at times, with its radiating white spokes and limitless horizons as seen from the tower. I’ve given up on capturing the warm brick and pink tones, but find a nice Tuscan gold.
I order a bottle of water as soon as I sit down, primarily to hold it’s icy goodness on the back of my neck.
It’s hard to imagine this plaza crowded with thousands in the full sun for the Palio, arguably the strangest race in the world. High noon. Sweaty horses (Sudati?). Bareback riders in silk pajamas. No discernable rules. A horse can win the race riderless.
Most of the neighborhood flags have been taken down since the recent race, but I can still see where the packed earth from the track resides between the stones. I wonder how they remove it the dirt. My guess is a backhoe, which the Italians seem to use for everything. Maybe one thousand “sweaty guys” on backhoes! The image cracks me up. That crazy Americana is laughing to herself again.
Ciao for now!
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