Sometimes terrible events happen in one's life and your first reaction is to pretend that they did not happen and blithely go about your business. But that would be unfair to you, my blog readers, who have an expectation of learning about all the aspects of my experience on this ship, warts and all. So it is with that in mind that I tell you a week ago last Friday, I lost my camera. We had rented a car in Livorno and driven to Siena, about an hour and a half away. It was a bit of a bozo explosion because Siena had had their big horse race, the Palio, the night before, and things were still in full swing. The Palio consists of a horse from each of the city's seventeen (I think) neighborhoods running a race around a track in the city's center. The races last approximately ninety seconds. Each neighborhood is represented by a brightly colored flag, usually with some kind of barnyard animal upon it. If you are one of my eight-month old nephews and do not want to know what you are receiving for Christmas/your first birthday, you might not want to read the next sentence. They had a lot of these flags for sale and I bought several.
Our time there was a bit rushed, just because it took us such a long time to find a parking space. But we were able to walk through the town's cathedral, which had a statue by Michelangelo inside, and then eat a fantastic meal. We also ran into a parade by the winning neighborhood. The parade consisted of a bunch of junior high age boys in yellow and white tights and plumed hats drumming and waving their neighborhood's flags. Some of them had pacifiers in their mouths, the significance of which we were never able to figure out. All of them looked mildly hungover. I got a ton of great pictures of them, some of which Cody complimented (which is high praise indeed because he is a gifted photographer), but they were all for naught since I lost my camera. But imagine, if you can, a bleary eyed thirteen year old half-heartedly waving a gigantic flag with a certain je ne sais quoi that somehow captures the entire human condition. Then you will kind of have an idea of the kind of pictures I took.
I'm not sure where I lost my camera. It was definitely in the car on the drive home, so it either fell out at the gas station where we unsuccessfully tried to fill up the tank, or the next people who rented the car stole off with it, or it was snatched up by some ferret-eyed passenger who noticed that I failed to pick it up when I put it through the ship's x-ray machine. Whoever has it now, I hope they appreciate pictures of teenage parade revelers and elderly Sicilian women.
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