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Onda, Baby

In which I pick a contrada to back at the Palio
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So that’s Sordello and me, at the street banquet tonight in the contrada of Onda (the Wave). We were seduced into pledging allegiance to Onda through the ministrations of the baptized Onda member Ron Herzman, the eminent American Dantist, with whom we drank a grappa today.

Here’s a View From Your Table at the street banquet in the Onda quarter tonight:

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It’s hard to express the strangeness but also the wonderfulness of being in such a small place, but where people take their contradas with utmost seriousness. Domenic Canonico, a Notre Dame student and a reader of this blog, and I were wandering through the back streets around the Campo, and caught men of the Torre contrada marching out behind their horse, singing at the top of their lungs (they appeared a minute after this selfie was taken):

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Here’s a long view of the street dinner in Onda tonight:

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It’s funny, but after 36 hours here, I couldn’t tell you one street from the other, but I already know where most of the contrada are, having walked through them.

What a great town Siena is! The city is getting ever more pumped for the big race on Thursday. I will have to go down the street to consult the exposed head of St. Catherine of Siena to ask her for advice on betting. I love me a Catholic country, for sure.

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