Florence (Firenze)

Well, on day three in Casola Valsenio it was still miserable, so we figured we would move on and take our chances. We needed gas, so we stopped at a local gas station on the way out. The gas attendant offered Julie and I “carnival treats” while she filled our tank. We just couldn’t refuse, how could we? To get to Florence was long and tiring. The road curved up and down so many mountains that Julie had to take an anti-nausea pill and my arms were getting tired of gripping the steering wheel. Luckily our sosta (camper parking location) was far enough outside the city center that we didn’t have to contend with too much traffic. Now we lucked out huge at this sosta. It was supposed to cost 10 euros, however, upon arrival we found out that the new 2008 price was 12 euros which didn’t matter in the end since we ended up not having to pay. On the way in, no one was tending the gates (lunch hour) and when a local pulled in behind us, he just simply got out of his car and swiped us in. On our way out, we managed to leave right behind a lady (once again no attendant). Our first stop in Florence was to the Academia Museum which houses Michelangelo’s “David” (the guy who fought Goliath). The rest of the museum was sort of a waste of time, although it did have other known statues (Julie pointed them out to me). Michelangelo’s David was so much larger then Julie and I had expected. It was truly impressive. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take pictures in the museum. Afterwards we followed the tourist hordes to the Duomo plaza. All of the famous statues that were housed in the museum we just went to had replicas on display which you could view for free outside. Although we don’t regret paying to see “David” we would have liked to skip out on paying the €6.50/person entry fee. We were crossing the plaza to have a better chance to take some photos when a guy on a cell phone started telling us to back up for a moment and pointed at a crane that had a film crew in the basket. So we watched some guy wearing religious garb walk slowly for the camera. Once they were done we were allowed to keep walking so we did. We passed by another museum, this one was the Uffizi, where a car bomb was set off not too long ago, we decided not to go in as it was another €6/person. The Ponte Vecchio bridge is the only bridge in Florence to survive the bombing of WWII and is special because it used to be lined with butcher shops until the Uffizi family requested it to be lined with jewelry shops. We did some browsing and thankfully Julie didn’t like anything. It was getting late so we headed back to the van. When we turned on the laptop we found out that we had internet access, so we updated our blog and downloaded more TV shows. We stayed up late that night because it was Fat Tuesday and the church/concert hall was playing loud music until the wee hours of the night. With the way Italian men are with women, Julie has no interest in heading out to a bar. Too bad too, Fat Tuesday is supposed to be fun.