Whirlwind in Firenze

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I bet you all are wondering what happened since I left Florence. Well, I will give periodic updates until you are caught up. Once I slow down a little, I will post. I promise. I will even try to throw in some pictures. I went to Florence and then the next update was for Spain with many days in between.

So, starting where I left off. Well, Florence was a quick ¨let´s show mom as much as I can in one day¨type of thing. Florence is a great city if it wasn´t for all the tourists!! It is hard to see it for what it is at its historical and significant core when you are trying to avoid cars, bicycles, and mopeds. It is very difficult to enjoy the magnificant city when weaving in between the wandering tourists, whose eyes are in the sky gazing at all the sites or in their maps and not on where they are going. (I love it when they come to a dead stop right in front of you). It is a bustling city and comes more alive at night when there are less people wandering aimlessly looking for David or the Uffizi. Ponte Vecchio on the Arno river is a great site to see when all the shops and peddlers have gone and there is just you and a few people enjoying the evening while having a gelato. Well, we did not get to see that Florence unfortunately due to the time constraints. However, we managed to get off the beaten path, unexpectantly and ended up wandering quietly down the sides of towns most tourists manage to dismiss. Ah, there is where you will notice the beautiful city where Michelangelo was born and inspired to create David, his masterpiece sculpture that is worth a visit to see. We even came upon a small Jewish section with a kosher vegetarian restaurant called Ruth´s. (My mother´s name). So of course we went inside and there amongst the 6 or so Jewish patrons, we met a college student studying abroad who is from Northbrook, a suburb of Chicago!! Small, small world. There we were in an off-the-beaten-path, Jewish neighborhood in Florence, Italy and we run into a restaurant called Ruth´s and a boy from Chicago eating kosher inside on a Jewish holiday!! Life is ironic, eh? Ah, well, maybe the best time to see Florence is in the winter when all the tourists have flown south.

We left Florence after catching an early train to head west actually, to a little Tuscan town called Lucca. This is where I will continue in a later blog. Cheers!!

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Photos

On Plaza Vecchio
A fountain

A "statue" in front of Uffizi
(it really is a live man)

The Real statue of David
David in the Accademia