Targa Floria

One weekend while in Palermo, an Englishman arrived at the Pont Hotel. He had come to watch the Targa Floria auto race. These were sports cars racing over a 26 mile course on the local roads which were blocked off for the race. Carol Shelby was there with his race cars, and Dan Gurney was driving a car in the race.

I was not familiar with the race, but it sounded interesting, so I went with him to see the race. He had rented a car, and we were off to the races.

With a 26 mile race, you can just see a quarter mile section of the race from your location. So we found a spot on a hillside, and watched the the cars race past every 15 minutes or so. Seeing a nice grassy spot on a hillside nearby, we moved over there to improve our view.

We had just settled down, when we heard a loud shout "ANDIAMO!" Looking around, I saw a large shotgun lying across the lap of an angry looking man up the hill behind us, who was sitting on folding metal lawn chairs with I presume his two grown sons.

We shouted "escuzi" and promptly moved out of his line of sight. We did not stop to ask the translation of "andiamo."

So a new word was added to my vocabulary.