Florence

So many pictures, all requiring a thousand words. Florence was akin to a spiritual experience for me--you may have picked up by now that I've been crushing on Michelangelo, and after reading The Agony and the Ecstasy I was so primed for this city. I could blog this one for days and never be done raving. Instead, I'll give you the abridged version.

Here we are in the rain outside our hotel.

Here's the work you know and love in the piazza I know and love. This copy is one of a bunch of great statues in the Piazza Della Signoria.

Here's the only intact bridge left after WWII. It used to carry the Medici across in the passage at the top, and is now lined with fantastic shops selling mostly jewellery.

This is Gregory (my brother-law) enjoying one of the many little cars. We were equally delighted with all the small vehicles and took an exorbitant number of pictures of them. Miles approved! We loved getting to be with Beth and Gregory--somehow it's thrilling to see people you know out of context like that. Someone to whom you can say, "Hey, we're in Italy!"

A beautiful, rainy alley on the way to Santo Spirito.

One of the only amazing things we were allowed to photograph. This Pieta was done by Michelangelo when he was 79-80 years old, and he intended for it to go on his tomb. The face of Nicodemus is Michelangelo's face. This was, for me, a powerful piece.

This is one of the many delicious things we ate. Do we have amazing pastries in little shops all over and I'm missing it, or is it just not an American thing? And the gelato....We actually stopped for gelato on average four times a day. So yes, we exercised restraint. The winner: rice flavored. So good. But a word of warning concerning eating in Italy: do not sit at a cafe, or the cost of your hot chocolate quadruples, and don't trust your waiter at dinner when he tells you what to order. If you do, be prepared for 70 dollars of steak as a second after you've already eaten your fill of anti pasta and first plate. Not that this happened to us, you understand, but I'm just saying. Good times, Beth and Gregory, good times.

These people really work the whole moto thing.

Really.

And here's inside the duomo's cupola.

Wow. Everything here is really close together. After Rome, it was lovely to stumble so suddenly on all this beauty.

Here's Mike in front of the duomo (the church--you can't actually see the dome from this angle, so quit looking.)

This is the campanile (Giotto's tower)that we climbed to get a most thrilling view of Florence. Worth the hike, and you get that pleasant soreness the next day so you feel justified in downing one extra gelato. Or two.

Said thrilling view: one of 4.

And how about those police officers, wearing their fancy uniforms designed by Armani (or are these the ones by Valentino--I mix them up)? Either way, nothing says law and order like a good purse.

Here's a throwback to Rome, since we're on the subject of uniforms. This is the Swiss Guard who take care of the Pope in the Vatican City, complete with uniforms designed by Michelangelo himself. Come on, now--the man could do just about everything else; even his genius had to have a limit.

FYI: This blogging thing is hard on me, because I want to regurgitate everything I know and learned here, but I feel limited to what I have pictures of, which isn't half of what I saw there that really mattered to me. So maybe next post I'll record some of that for my own records. I'll understand if you skip it.