Firenze!!! (Florence.)

Florence was our last stop in Italy. Briefly the capital of Italy, and home to countless artists, the city is full of sites to see. Consequently, this is the largest gallery of photos I've posted of the Big Trip!

I won't try to summarize the history of Florence. I'm not even going to tell you where to go if you decide to take a trip there. OK, OK, I'll do a little of both by explaining what we did while we were there.

Our visit began with lunch at Cibreo, where I had stuffed chicken neck for the first time ever! It's a traditional Florentine dish that comes with the head still attached. Fortunately for me, no other restaurant which we ate at in Florence had a dish on their menu that I had not had.

While traveling through other parts of Tuscany, we often read about Florence and even saw the impact it had on the history of other cities. Finally we were in the city that Montepulciano sided with against Siena. We visited Florence's spectacular Duomo, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, which was finished, unlike Siena's Duomo, the expansion of which was halted after Florence trounced them. Like just about every church in Italy, you have to pay to get into the Duomo in Florence, but if you pay to climb the dome (separate fee and separate entrance from the main doors), then you can see the inside of the church, including the frightening pointy-penis-filled Last Judgement, on your way up to the top. Now that's a holy bargain! We also climbed to the top of the Campanile (bell tower) to get just about the same view of the Florence as we had from the tom of the Duomo, except with the Duomo in it.

Florence is like an outdoor museum, which is is great for me since I love statues. Dana was a bit disappointed, though... all of the paintings that they left outside were wet and covered in pigeon poop. Statues are rain-and-pigeon-resistant. In the Loggia dei Lanzi, an outdoor gallery in the Piazza della Signoria, I found some of the most incredible sculptures I have seen. Some of these were replicas, such as Michaelangelo's David, but others were the originals.Having artwork out in the open air has always been risky. It used to be a known hazard that when when, say, Siena sacked Florence, they would destroy the statue that had been made to commemorate the Florentine sacking of Siena. These days, statues out in the open are subject to destruction by common tourists, such as when three brain surgeons climbed the Fountain of Neptune in 2005, snapping off the god's hand and bending his phallic trident. Ouch. I think the Italians should get in on the game and commission a series of statues dedicated to the scorning of tourists. For example, a marble statue of a local running away with a tourist's camera, or a police officer intentionally giving bad direction to a family with four small children, in bronze.

During lunch at the Uffizi, I made a startling discovery: Italian birds are vicious! As I was taking a bite of my sandwich, a sparrow flew over and took a bite right out of it. He kept coming back as I tried to finish my meat and cheese on bread, so I had to swat wildly at the air and keep chewing to a minimum. I won. He ate no more.

The morning after our second night, Dana and I packed up our things and prepared to store our things for storage until our night train departed for Nice. I double-checked the train time and noticed something odd about the date of departure... it was the next day! Our host spoke nothing but Italian - the quick kind, too - but I managed to ask her if we could stay another night. I understood that she would check the books and let me know. When we did get back to me, she confirmed that I was asking to stay a forth night... I had already booked three nights! We unpacked and enjoyed an unscheduled day in Florence. The real drama would be the following night.

With our new day, we checked out the Boboli Gardens and the wonderful sculptures and pigeons that adorn it. I was a bit disappointed that we didn't book that Segue tour, but our one last great Italian meal was thoroughly enjoyed. Our hotel suited us for one more night. Florence isn't inexpensive, so we chose location over luxury. This was the site of the mosquito war. An extra star may have given us a private bathroom, but what we needed was air-conditioning.

Four pages of photos of Florence! See them all! Seriously, there are four pages, the Ponte Vecchio, plenty of fountains, funny little Italian cars, Dana and me sitting on long-female-legged barstools in an Australian pub.