they got soul but they're not soldiers, or: how we visited florence and didn't see the david

I'm taking some time to catch up a bit on here as Brie proofreads my 30-page arbitration statement that I could not be more sick of. (If she were proofing this I would change it to, 'of which I could not be more sick.') Hopefully they'll think this first draft is outstanding and I will spend no more of my time in Italy working. I will spend it blogging, instead.

We arrived in Florence fairly late in the evening. I had reserved a room in an apartment by email earlier that week, and I called
to say we were going to be late. The woman who answered, Marcella, spoke only Italian, with a little smattering of English, and didn't have my reservation. So that was a fun little test of my Italian. We got it worked out (she said, "oh, Rick Steves!" at one point) and we arrived around nine. The room was nice, a little suite. It had been her daughter's room. After a little while Marcella came in with the phone. She was talking to an American who she couldn't understand and wanted me to translate for her. So that was interesting. Her Italianglish was really cute, but I don't know if I can get across how she talked without being there to imitate her. She kept asking me if I had called my mamma.

Brie and I went for a walk that night but didn't find much since we didn't take a map and didn't really know where we were going. The next day, we decided to take it a little easy, especially considering we had so long in Florence, and just relax and take care of some things. We bought food at the Central Market, where I was rudely clapped at, and then we went to do some laundry. We walked to the laundromat in the neighbhorhood, and then Brie and I went to get some coffee. There were three guys and an older man already in the cafe, who apparently were interested in the fact that Brie couldn't tell what the white substance (shown in the picture at left) was, and I had to taste it before she would put it in her coffee. We have since put "indentifying condiments" on her list of bottom five skills. If you're playing along at home, the answer was... sugar. Sugar, folks.

Brie, utilizing her effortless ability to attract older Italian men, eventually lured the man over. It was his birthday, he told us. This is his line with women. Would we come over and join him? He took Brie's hand so she couldn't really say no. We had been trying to figure out if the guys with him were Italian or not (they looked American but then one of them started speaking perfect Italian to Antonio) and so we had that answered. They were American, but one of them, Dexter, had been living in Italy off and on for years. We talked to them for a while, and after Antonio asked Brie why she was wearing snow boots and asked me why I was covering myself up with a scarf, we decided to rejoin Yvette. But we made plans to meet the Americans, sans Antonio, that night at the Tavern Jock, the Scottish Pub where Dexter worked. Because the guys just finished being special Black Ops spies in the army, I am not allowed to reveal their full names. I will call them only "Coma" and "Steve McCann."

The next day, despite the best efforts of the Tavern Jock, Brie and I were able to make it to Lucca, a little town about an hour away by train. Yvette stayed to explore Florence. There was an incident at the train station which involved me yelling, "Six minutes, Brie, you have six minutes! Go, go, go!" I feel like I should mention it, because it happened, but I don't want to talk about it.

Lucca was lovely. The whole town is encircled by a wall, built during the Middle Ages and fortified during the Renaissance. It's so wide that there's a little paved road along the top of the wall, with trees. We rented bikes for 2.50€ and rode around the top of the wall for an hour. It was so great, a gorgeous day. Definitely one of my favorite things of the whole trip.





We came back that evening and met Yvette and the two ex-spies for dinner at a place called, I think, Marone's, where I had amazing steak, and I don't even like steak that much normally, but it had just been a trip of too much pasta and pizza. But Coma and S.M. wouldn't shut up about the lunch place they ate at every day, Mario's, the best restaurant ever, blah blah blah, they laughed, they cried, it was better than the David.

So the next day we went with them to Mario's. And I have to admit, it was pretty fun, even though by this point in the trip I could have happily fasted for a week. Brie ate from a communal plate of beans, I'm not even kidding with you, so that was exciting in and of itself. It's one of those really Italian places where you don't know what you're ordering and the waitstaff kisses people on the cheek and someone always is filling your wine glass. Antonio got the whole table to sing "Happy Birthday A Te" to me. Maybe he thought I wanted to pick up women.

After lunch I was determined to see some sort of Renaissance Florentine art, so I went to the Bargello Museum by myself. Yvette said she would go but apparently when I said "art" she thought I said "shopping" and managed to lose me somewhere near San Lorenzo's Market. The Bargello's most famous piece is Donatello's David, you know, the kind of froofy one where he looks like he's playing dress up in his Grandmother's Easter hat. It was nice to be in the nearly-empty museum in the cool and quiet. I sat in the courtyard for a while and listened to distant Italian voices bouncing off the cobblestones.

After bidding farewell to the Tavern Jock and Coma and Steve McCann that night, we were up bright and late the next morning, ready to greet the new member of our party and see all that Renaissance stuff we hadn't been doing. But it was not to be.