The beautifully decorated horses we have seen in parades for the past two weekends are a part of Sicily we knew nothing of before visiting here. These parades are celebrating the feast of St Guiseppe, more than adequately described in the blog you can read by following the link below.
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The surrounding towns of Donalucata, Santa Croce and last night, Scicli, all had their celebrations, all different in their own ways.
Last night we travelled by 28 seater bus to the nearby town of Scicli especially to see the parade of horses which were the star attraction for us. Such massive, proud and spirited animals.
They pranced their way through the parade, many of them with solid legs and huge hooves, powerfully built and standing very tall, while we speculated on their probable heritage as war horses for knights in armour, or Roman soldiers. One beautiful gray built almost like a draft horse demonstrated a slow dressage trot with dignified aplomb and arched neck. Children often rode with an adult, some of them solo and obviously very at home in the saddle. The decorations made mostly of flowers signify the end of winter and celebrate the bountiful summer to come.
One of the slightly bizarre things we noticed was the several caravans selling hamburgers made with 'cavallo' meat, and seeing some of our fellow cruisers happily munching on horse hamburgers for dinner!
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