Florence - Taking a tour and seeing a march

  Florence, Italy
Friday, June 2, 2006

Today really has been a super day, other than the Unfortunate Wallet Incident. After updating almost everything this morning while it rained, I went out on a walking tour of the city this afternoon while Sarah napped. I went all over the area, finding all sorts of interesting things to take pictures of, including a wood-worker who modeled himself on Gepetto, a museum of medieval torture devices, and the headquarters for the Society of Dante Alighieri. I meant to go to the museum of science and technology over the ages, but I think I'm kind of museumed out for now.

After I got back, Sarah and I went out to do our laundry. I decided to wash my shoulder bag with everything else and sat watching it wash (and doing Sudoku). Sarah came back to watch it dry, and I grabbed my wallet from the Ziploc baggie of things that came out of my bag to check out the .99 cent store across the street. When I came back, I set the wallet near the pile of stuff that Sarah was watching, in full view of the other two customers (Americans from San Diego). While we were talking about the Uffizi (trying to remember what was where), a man came in, waving a pair of shoes, asking some question in Italian over and over. Since he was acting so weird, we all just stared at him. He walked over by a sign near us and pointed, which is when all four of us at least glanced up before turning back to stare at him, and my wallet grew legs. The moral of this story is to never wash your bag.



We decided to check out the Mexican food in Italy for dinner tonight, since we'd had Italian food in Mexico, and went to a place over by the Old Market. It turned out to be, oddly enough, Yucatecan Mexican, and the only place I've ever had that outside of the actual Yucatan. We had some pretty good fajitas with weird Yucatecan spices, I tried a mojito, and Sarah had the margarita. They were huge believers in alcohol. The place was on Via Ginori - I think I recommend it, if you don't mind something other than Sonoran or Tex Mex.

Post-dinner, we came back to the hotel to pick up stuff for the internet place and saw a huge march/protest/parade coming toward us. The conversation went something like this: "Sarah...do you think we should take a detour?" "We might have to. Let's wait and see if it looks peaceful." "Okay. Don't look American." "Got it."

We think it had something to do with the Republic Day in Italy tomorrow, and, despite the flaming torches, seemed to be entirely peaceful. The parade went in sections, with a different nationality or group (sometimes with accompanying music) in each section...the Irish group took time to stop in the street and hop up and down for awhile. They were also carrying tons of the rainbow peace flags, so I got out my camera to try and get some pics.



One of my random favorite parts of the night - before we hit the parade, we were waiting to cross the street with a lady and her little dachsund puppy. I'd seen the lady and her dog before in our neighborhood, so I made eye contact and raised my eyebrows at it, it did the same to me, so I said "Hi, puppy!" The dog took this as a sign to wriggle its way over to me and jump and bounce and sniff and be as friendly as possible. The lady appeared totally unphased and continued talking on her cell phone while I scratched her puppy. I miss my puppy. Pets are harder to leave than people, since there's no email or phone for them. Hi, Trini!

Sample pics of exploration are up, rest are at Flickr.