Mission Impossible

Our goal for Day 3 in the Val d'Orcia was to go to a town called Castiglion Fiorentino and see their Palio (a historic horserace around the central piazza in the middle of town, with riders representing the local districts).  So, I put the name of the town into our navigator & off we go.  We had no idea what time the race would run, so we shot for mid-day.  It was only supposed to be about a 45 minute drive.  An hour later, we realized we had driven an hour in the wrong direction.  Apparently, sometimes the names of the towns are all run together, like, "Castiglionfiorentino"  or there's also something about, "commune di…Castiglion Fiorentino..." (I still don't get it).   We were counting on the navigator being much smarter than I am.   SOOOO, nothing takes the wind out of your sails more than wasted time in the car.   We tried to come up with Plan B - should we try to see something close to where we found ourselves?  Should we try to drive back to the actual Castiglion Fiorentino & catch the race?  That's what we did.  It wasn't too bad getting there.  What was bad was that when we pulled into town, we were struck by the low level of activity around town - Hello! There's a Big Race happening today!  Where's all the Pomp?  Where's all the Circumstance?  Then we noticed that the Palio posters around town had handwritten signs taped to them, saying "Stato Rinviato   Giugno 22/16"  We stopped at the Information center.  I ran in and said, "Palio?" with a shrug & palms up.  The several women inside all started talking at once and doing a lot of pointing to the handwritten sign outside and pointing up at the top of town and then to the bottom of town and …..  I took from all of that - "it's not happening today."  It was spitting rain off and on and that's probably why they cancelled it.  It was rescheduled for the following Saturday.  We had wasted half the day on this wild goose chase.  And there was no payoff for all that time cooped up in the car - Ugh!

What we learned:
1) To be verrry suspicious of our navigator.
2) Not to attempt use of small town "Information" centers, and
3)  Big events can be completely cancelled hours before they are supposed to take place.

There's part of me that wants to go back next Saturday & see that thing.  But we are supposed to be somewhere else, so it will have to be The One that Got Away.