It is Monday about 1:30am. We leave tomorrow morning for our next location. Legnano has been great. My vocational visits were awesome, our outings have been fabulous and my host family has been wonderful. Yesterday we went to the Legnano Palio - this is a medieval re-enactment of a battle that took place here. The castle is still here and there is a museum inside, which I visited on one of my vocational trips - I think I might have talked about it in the last post - maybe not.
Anyway, the Palio was great. There are 8 different Contrada's here in Legnano - which are like different areas of Legnano - and they are all represented by different flags, symbols and back in the medieval times also knights, kings, queens, etc. So, here, we support the S. Domenico Contrada and their symbol is a dog (cane) with a torch in its mouth. Saturday we went to the San Domenico dinner which took place outside. It was A LOT of fun! There is a lot of singing, food and merriment. They introduce the King, Queen, Princess and the horse rider (they do not say jockey) who will be riding for that Contrada in the next day's horse race. I got a lot of great pictures and video of this night.
The next day is the parade of all of the Contradas with everyone dressed in medieval attire. Then there is the horse race. That is really funny because when they finally get to the race after all of the ceremony beforehand, it takes them awhile to get the horses lined up. Since it is the "medieval" times they do not have any horse shoots. So, it takes the horses a long time to get situated. It is pretty funny! :) Buoni, buoni, buoni....
Unfortunately San Domenico didn't win. They choose who goes first and then there is the first race. San Domenico, I believe, wasn't in that one. The winners move onto the second race and the San Domenico Contrada was a winner in the second race which meant that they were able to be in the final race - there are 3 races total. San Domenico was doing great until the horse rider fell off - but the horse just kept on running the race even after the race was over. The winning Contrada's fans all run onto the field and take the cross from the wagon and the cross stays in that Contrada's church until the next year. Palio is fun! :)
Today we went up to Lake Lugano and Maggiore - which are BEAUTIFUL. We actually went into Switzerland for a boat cruise. Northern Italy and Switzerland are quite, quite spectacular - the scenery is unbelievable. We went to one of the Rotarian's place of business today. He heads up a cake decorating factory - it was really cool - they make very beautiful cake toppers and decorations. Rebecca got engaged the Monday before we left and she was looking at one of the wedding cake toppers and was actually given the one she wanted as a present - it was awesome. We all got teary-eyed!
So, we are now back at our own respective homes packing up to make our next move tomorrow. We head to Sondrio which is up in the mountains.
Oh, I almost forgot. Last night after the Palio was over everyone and their families got together at my host family's home for pizza. My host family has a fabulous house and we actually ate down below thier home at their lowest level - which is a great game room type place with strobe and disco lights and a ping pong table. After dinner we actually had music Dj'd by Ondino (Gian Luca's oldest son) and had an awesome dance party, played ping pong and really had such a fun, fun time. It was AWESOME!
Things are going fabulous!
