A Crazy Heart for Firenze...Dude!

We woke up in Siena to birds chirping, bells ringing and Vespas buzzing. Siena is the city where Catherine hailed from. Only a woman could convince the pope to leave France and return to Rome. For that she is now honored as Europe’s patron Saint. Michelangelo got his start here. Then he left for Florence to do this sculpture of David, you may have heard about it. A college town unlike most others, you see the young students who are continuing the tradition started back in 1300. Pretty cool! Students of the world descend here to learn about art. I can see why one of my blog followers said, “Siena? It’s my favorite city in Italy”.


We stopped at a Pizzeria, filled with some college students from Spain. They were all excited as they were writing on a paper who they were and what they thought of the pizza. The owner takes their picture and puts it up on the wall. The owner was kind enough to take our picture too, but it won’t be going up on any walls. He used our camera.

It was hard to leave Siena, but Firenze beckoned us to see how Michelangelo did with his sculpture of David.  We set out for the short drive to the Capital of the Renaissance. Just in time for rush hour! Tomtom (GPS) got us here but had us going down a 'pedestrian only' street a block from the hotel.  He didn’t know Florence had changed the rules about cars in the city center. I tried to find my way back around but it wasn’t easy.  Now Chris and I can sometimes butt heads about each other’s driving, but throw in extremely narrow streets, buzzing scooters, one way streets and a bit of renaissance fatigue, well let’s just say we kissed and made up. Déjà vu!  Thanks to a very nice and friendly police officer, who gave us authorization to drive down the pedestrian only street as she couldn’t even figure out how to get to our hotel, we made it.

Parking here is not cheap.  In fact, nothing in Florence is cheap.  So you scale down on the food. We had our own kind of room service for dinner.  I went to the local market and got some salami, fresh bread, some tomatoes, blood oranges, a tray of Aperifresco cheese, potato chips and popcorn.  The popcorn was for the movie Chris had brought with her. So we watched 'Crazy Heart' with Jeff Bridges. He was really good. Not the Big Lebowski good, but good. We had our own wine so it was dinner in bed and a movie with Mr. Bridges in Firenze, Dude!



Dinner and a Movie