Best. Welcome. Ever
We headed straight into the city and started to explore. At first we were just wandering around and to be honest I couldn't see what all the hype was about. Sure the town was beautiful, but I had been to Annecy, a place that knocks your socks off with beauty, and I wondered if my impression of Florence was to be spoiled by the previous experience we had had. I couldn't have been more wrong. Florence is a magical city, and we mainly discovered this by our night activities. Florence at night is when the city becomes alive. Live music on every corner, street lamps making the streets glow golden, a carousel lit up and statues scattered through the streets all make Florence one of my favourite places this trip.
Some sort of performance we saw while on the bridge
On this particular night we stayed on the Ponte Vecchio where there were two guys playing live music. We climbed up onto the wall trying our hardest not to fall off into the water and listened. This is when a group of three Italian guys arrived and Amelia whispered to me that they were checking us out. We ignored them until I accidentally made eye contact with one of them. Unfortunately it wasn't love at first sight but it was all the encouragement this gentleman needed to come over to us and start a conversation. Looking back on how he opened up the conversation makes me giggle a little as he asked us whether we speak Italian. To this we shook our heads. He then asked if we spoke French. Nope. Spanish? Nada. So now that he had established that he was talking to two very intelligent girls he then started to talking to his friends... in Italian, or French, or potentially Spanish, we wouldn't know. One of his other friends then decided to join him in his efforts to chat us up. The highlight moment was when one of the street sellers approached the boys offering roses for them to buy for us. So disappointed when they didn't, but nonetheless we had an invitation to Michelangelo's piazza, which we politely declined. They then lost interest as we gained a new interest in something that was occurring on the river just below us. There was a torch lit gondola with a beautiful woman draped in white sitting in the front. We thought that maybe she was going to her wedding and got very excited. Our excitement only grew when we saw a second gondola with a man dressed in white standing in the front. Was this to be a river wedding? We still don't know, but we assume that it was only a performance as there was a group of gondolas with tourists in them. Now Amelia has it in her head that she wants to be married in a gondola on a river. The images of Amelia on the Brisbane river standing in a gondola trying desperately not to fall in, in her wedding gown, gives me much amusement I must confess. After our excitement died down we decided to wander around in the city and of course get some gelato.
The next day we climbed to the top of the Dome in Florence which has incredible views of Florence and where Amelia had a classic moment saying; "we are on a cupola, I don't know what that is but we're on a dome". We bought street art and got conned into buying a caricature by yet another seedy Italian.
However it was that night which actually was my favorite night we've had so far on this trip. We had decided to get some nice drinks and pizza and walk to Michelangelo's piazza to watch the sunset and Florence by night and that we did! Armed with pizza and mineral drinks we found a seat on a huge set of steps (along with about 50 other people) view of Florence in front of us, and live music playing next to us. This involved spilling our drinks and then trying to stop the flow before it rained down on the women sitting below us, me almost flinging our pizza onto them chucking the pizza box on the puddle, Amelia trying to catch it in her hands and saying, "wait wait let me get my hand wipes!". We did prevent the deluge with much laughter and embarrassment and enjoyed the sunset which was stunning.
On Sunday after church we had a date with David which I wish he had dressed up for a little more. It ended up being very much a one sided conversation due to his stony heart. If you haven't caught on yet we visited Michelangelo's sculpture of David which was incredible!
The rest of the gallery was a little disappointing due to the fact of poor lighting and crowding of the statues. But David was stunning. Apart from a trip up to Frezole where we saw another incredible view of Florence, ate a cheap but dodgy pasta meal and had more gelato that was the end of our time in Florence. The next day we headed out to our next destination: Venice.
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