Chiao Chiao Fiorella! Thank you for a fabulous time!
And some some socks:
We arrived in Florence around mid-day on Sunday. We checked with Rick Steves who told us to park in Porta Romano (or something like that), outside of the city walls, so that we would not have to register our car with the hotel or pay a fine. There was much celebrating when we found out that parking was free on Sundays. And we were really glad that we didn't drive into Florence, because there were SO MANY PEOPLE THERE!
After checking into our hotel (which was definitely not worth what we paid for it, but was right around the corner from the main piazza and from the Duomo, we wandered back towards our car to visit the Boboli Gardens. We weren't so impressed. Part of it, I think, was that we were hot and tired, but mostly it was crowded and lots of the fountains and gardens were closed for renovation. So, we pretty much got dehydrated and seriously dusty (like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown dusty...we left little clouds behind us as we walked).
Jim does some stretches before heading up a giant hill in the Boboli Gardens:
Actually, the view from the top of the gardens was pretty awesome:
Eventually, we made it to the Pitti Palace, but we were too tired and dusty to go inside:
We straggled around through the crowds some more, walked across the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge of buidings that goes across the Arno River, pushed our way through the crowds to look at the Uffizi from outside (I am SURE I am spelling all of these names wrong). The crowds were massive and there was no way we were getting in that place. Unfortunately, it was closed on Monday, so we looked at the fake statue of David outside and continued on our sweaty way. Back in our hotel room, we cranked the air conditioner (which stopped working after that) and watched a Gerarad Depardieu movie that had originally been in French but was dubbed in Italian. You kinow the plot isn't too complex when you can't understand a word of what they are saying, but still can follow what is going on.
Once twilight fell, the crowds dispersed and we could walk around Florence, unempeded. We followed the streets out of the cetral part of the city and into more local type area. We stopped to look at the river and discovered that the River Arno has big, huge nutria, just like in Louisiana! They kept us entertained for a good half hour, swimming back and forth...and then the bats started up. We could hear them squeaking and, occasionally, they flew past our faces. It was pretty cool.
From the bats and the nutria, we ended up at a really cool wine bar, where Jim ordered a red wine, but got a Campari Soda (language barrier again). Then we decided to try to find a place to eat and eventually settled on a restaurant that was near our hotel and where the waiter said, "English?! You have to order in ten minutes." So we did...and he forgot my meal. Then, when we got back to the hotel, we got chewed out by the guy at the desk for not having turned in our key before leaving the building. We said we didn't know we were supposed to turn it in and he said, "Well, if you had turned it in, you would have known!" huh? That's the second time I cried on the trip. Sometimes two mean people in a row get to me.
The night was hot because the air conditioner was broken (on the farm, with the many windows, we didn't need an air conditioner), but we heard the Duomo's bells ringing at every hour and it was beautiful.
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