Watch Your Feet and Drive Me to Firenze!

The title of this post comes from a Phish song that Bill sang often along the streets of Florence. I still haven’t heard the original.

Florence was pretty awesome once we figured out the tiny one-way streets. Until then it was miserable. Our hotel was a small mom-n-pop place that didn’t seem to like when Bill and I would come in any later than 10, which was every night. When we first ventured out we only had to walk about a block to the Duomo, which is huge and awesome.

Throughout our dinner that evening we heard a choir singing so we went to investigate when we finished. We wandered around until we found that the singing was coming from open windows on the second floor of an obscure building. We sat outside listening to this amazing music for about an hour, and slowly more and more people found themselves sitting in awe with us. After one of their songs all of us on the street erupted in applause, and after a moment we heard laughing from inside; I guess they didn’t know they had attracted an audience. As they came out we learned that they were the choir for Il Duomo, and they often rehearse and perform at Sunday mass. We felt really lucky to be in the right place at the right time that night.

The next day we ventured across Ponte Vecchio, an old bridge that spans the Arno River, and made our way to the top of a hill overlooking Florence. We found a nice little spot and Bill enjoyed his new Weezer album while I made more headway in my book. It was a low-key day, but it was perfect for us.

That night we had some incredible food at Il Latini, a restaurant that our friend Lisa recommended. We sat down at a communal table and waited for food to arrive, as there was no menu. Everything was fresh and fantastic, and yes, pretty expensive. It was totally worth it.

On our last full day in Florence we found the Accademie Gallerie where the David is housed. Bill was taken aback by the David. I’d seen it once before, but it never fails to amaze me what a perfect sculpture it is. If you haven’t seen it, it’s much bigger than you would expect, and it’s more detailed than you can imagine. There are veins along the back of the giant hands, muscles are clearly outlined around the whole body, and the whole sculptue is in such perfect proportion it’s hard to believe that human hands created it. I’m tellin’ ya, Michaelangelo - he’s good!

For much of the rest of the rainy day Bill and I had what we call an American day, where we get some kind of take out and watch a movie on the computer, and don’t feel guilty at all. We made it back just in time to miss the downpour, so it was hard to feel bad sitting inside.

That night we had more awesome food thanks to another great recommendation by Lisa. We spent the night wandering around the city, and got ready for our next day of travel...