Day 19: Friday, May 9, Florence

Sitting down after a long day of standing is a great feeling.

Today we started by wandering through the open-air markets. Unlike Siena, this market is devoted to tourist items, particularly leather. The stalls had “changing rooms” that consisted of curtains that could be drawn around a customer. After quickly seeing everything they had to offer, I spent about an hour playing “ID the Americans.” It was too easy, so I changed it to try to guess who was American, who was Italian, and who was non-Italian European. I have a pretty impressive success rate if I do say so myself. Some more American giveaways: American eagle jeans (particularly on girls), shorts and flip flops, sundresses with nothing underneath (I haven’t seen too many Europeans wearing sundresses and those that do wear at least black tights underneath), hairstyles and sunglasses, and those bead necklaces on guys. Americans also really do seem to laugh more.

There were a number of Africans on an empty side street branching off from the market. I immediately guessed that they were there to sell the knock-off products that the established vendors couldn’t sell; it was confirmed when one started walking behind my brother and I while asking if we were looking for Gucci, Prada, etc. In Rome the police didn’t seem to care, but here in Florence there are signs up saying not to buy fake goods, and we saw a set of sellers pack up quickly and head out when police came into view.

After quickly seeing the Duomo we headed to several smaller museums. (The Duomo is impressive architecturally – they built the building without knowing how to build a dome to span it, confident that someone would come along and solve the problem – it isn’t very interesting inside.) We saw Donatello’s David, but unfortunately it was face-down on a table for restoration. I thought the Donatello vs. Michelangelo comparison was really interesting. Donatello was earlier than Michelangelo, so perhaps he didn’t have all of the benefits of other influences that Michelangelo did, but the Davids couldn’t be more different. Go look them up if you haven’t seen them before.

That afternoon we attempted to go to the American Memorial Cemetery outside of Florence. It had been suggested to me and I have never been to an American war cemetery on foreign soil, plus it was a good change of pace. However, the cemetery is one stop on an intercity line, and we found out that the buses to and from the cemetery were all full for the afternoon. Everyone was doing their traveling because a bus strike was going to start at 5pm. The bad news is that we didn’t make it to the cemetery, and I was more disappointed than I thought I would be, but the good news was that we didn’t get stranded out at the cemetery at night.

Shirt sightings for the day: “Men is Glam” and “Lost my wife mitancare.” Unless Mitancare is a brand, that last one takes the cake.

I had “Bringing In the Sheaves” stuck in my head tonight. I haven’t sung it in at least seven years and I only remember the chorus, but that didn’t stop it from lodging in my head. That was because something at dinner reminded me of “Eating Goober Peas.”