Contrada parties and fun with friends!

I have been focusing on my weekend travels in my last couple entries, so I wanted to give some updates on my life in Siena. Currently, the whole city is buzzing over the Palio – the horse race that I continue to mention. It is taking place next weekend and each neighborhood or contrada is preparing with decorations, parties, and baptisms. Each of the 17 contrade have their own animal and color combination, and Siena is decked to the nines with contrada spirit!

My evenings in the city are typically spent either studying and working on medical school applications or travelling to the city center for dinner/drinks/contrada parties. Take a guess which of these are more fun J Annie has a magazine article from back home that lists tons of great restaurants in the city. Mara, Annie, and I tried one of them – Osteria della Logge – a few weeks ago. Most of our friends (ie, all of the Canadians and girls that lived at the Villa) were only here through July and left at the end of the month. To celebrate the end of classes and exams, Marie and Maja came up with an idea to have a potluck dinner. Everyone from the Villa prepared a different type of food, mostly things they would eat at home, and we all ate together. I made Swedish meatballs which were a HUGE hit J. It was crazy trying to prepare so many dishes in a tiny little kitchen with two burners and one oven, but we made it work! Even Stefano, who works the front desk of the Villa, joined us – he brought the wine, like a typical Italian.

Also, before everyone parted ways at the end of July, we went to another restaurant from Annie’s list – Osteria dal Divo – for one last night out. Even though both restaurants had great food, I definitely preferred the second one. Throughout the night, they served us free Prosecco (a kind of fizzy white wine), puff pastries with cheese, and dessert cookies. The atmosphere in the restaurant was incredible; the building used to be an Etruscan grotto, so the walls and ceiling reminded me of a cave. For dinner, Annie and I split an appetizer of mushrooms and melted cheese in a crunchy shell, and I had risotto with cheese and zucchini. The man who served the risotto spooned it out of this huge cheese wheel; I had never seen anything like that before. He also kind of looked like a member of the Addams family (see pic!)

After our dinner at Osteria della Logge, a large group of us went to a contrada party for Nicchio – the Shell contrada. We danced to great mix of American and Italian music, trying to make the most of our last night together. The party was packed with people, and we ran into a lot of other students from our school. It was a great way to enjoy our last night all together!

More updates coming soon! Ciao :-)

Brittany

PS - I was hoping to include more pictures, but the internet here continues to hate me!