DuomoAnother early morning--grrrrrr! I thought you were supposed to sleep in on vacations!
Breakfast as usual and meet down in the lobby to get on the bus by 7:15. The group is quieter today as we are all worn out from all the early mornings and brisk walks everywhere. The bus ride is about 3 hours again and we stop half way at another rest stop. We all have our money ready for the toilet lady but this stop doesn't have one today. AT least there are plenty of stalls and it's pretty clean. They also have a store here so we wander around a bit and some people purchase wine and olive oil to take home. Several people buy some of the Baci chocolates as well.
Off again for the remainder of the ride. I don't really remember much of it so I must have dozed for a while. We finally arrive in Florence and are told that we need to get off the bus quickly as our driver is going to take us as close as possible to the entrance to the square even though he's not supposed to get that close with a bus. We all file off and meet up at the beginning of what looks like a road but is mostly for pedestrians and we walk up about 4 blocks or so to the Santa Croce square (which means Holy Cross).
Lot's of shops line the square and there are a lot of people walking around. Our guide Valerie explains that this is the meeting place and what we will be doing for the day. The first stop is to the Leather shop. Florence is known for its leather coats and purses as well as for gold. The gold store is our second stop. Anyway, we all walk over to the Leather shop where they first give us a demonstration of how they emboss leather--a tradition that's being carried on for centuries. Then they show us some leather coats. Kathy gets to model one and we all fall in love with this coat. It's absolutely beautiful--sort of a long swing coat with vertical stripes of leather and brushed leather (looks like suede but isn't). It's got a high collar that can be folded down for an interesting label as well. Of course, our buddy Jay yells out that he wants his wife to be the first one to try it on and probably buy it. We all roll our eyes -- typical of Jay to do this. I don't think anyone ended up buying it but it was beautiful. I had planned on buying some really nice purses but the prices were not at all what I had expected. I had heard that the discounts on Gucci bags, etc. would be tremendous but I can't quite pay $400.00 or so for a purse. So, I head back to the coats and finally decide on one and buy that.
This is also my first run-in with VAT taxes. I've heard of this for a long time but have never spent enough money to have to worry about it. The leather coat puts me over the limit so I am able to get the forms to fill out for the VAT refund (or, alleged refund but more about that later!).
We're told to make sure we're back at the meeting place at 2:30 so we can all go to the museums. Kathy and I headed over to the gold store and I'm again disappointed by the prices. I had heard gold was cheap here. I suppose since it's 18 karat gold that this isn't too bad but ... it's about $14.00 per gram which is pretty much what we pay in Boston though that is 12K gold (or what ever the norm is in the states). But, I buy a couple pairs of earrings anyway, making sure I buy something light so it doesn't cost too much. Out of time, so we head back to the meeting place. We forgot to have lunch and are starving so we decide NOT to go to the museums but to go have lunch instead. But, since we wanted to see the statue of David, we make plans with Val to meet in front of the Duomo at a designated time so we can get in there.
Duomo
Before we head out, Maria, the woman who keeps getting lost, was complaining that nobody cared about her and she was all alone and blah blah blah. We sort of pushed her onto some people and went on our way, not knowing that Maria would once again get lost and cause the other people lot's of aggravation! How do you solve a problem like Maria? That was the question of the week.
We head back down the street and find a little ristorante and have some wine and food. It really was the right decision to sit and relax for a while. We ate and drank and just relaxed for a while and finally headed out to find the Duomo. We got a little lost winding through the streets but eventually found it. Wow! It is the biggest building I've seen that didn't just go straight up like a skyscraper. It's absolutely beautiful. We found Val and the rest of the group though only about 4 of us went in the Academie to see David. It's a smaller museum and we went directly to David--what an image! He has to be about 2 stories tall and is indoors. And again I'm surprised to find out that this is David from David and Goliath!! Nobody ever mentioned that before. Michaelangelo sculpted David when he was just 26 years old--amazing. You can see the veins in his arms and hands and he's just magnificent. But, we weren't allowed to take pictures--not sure why. We walked around a bit but there wasn't anything else spectacular that we could see. And besides, we're kind of museum'd out at this point so we find Val and head back to the group which then heads back to the bus.
David
We also never got to Ponte Vechhio but can see it from the next bridge (ponte) and snap some pictures of it. Apparently this is the most photographed bridge in the world even though it's not the most beautiful. On the way to the bus we see all kinds of vendors selling their stuff--this is where the bargains are! And we missed it. No time to browse or buy--didn't plan this out very well! But, they tell us the quality isn't as good--so what?! Anyway, we head up into the hills to go to Michaelangelo Park that overlooks Florence. It's even more beautiful from up there! The Duomo stands out above everything else.
We head back to Rome on the long bus ride back. I think we made a stop for the toilets again but really don't remember at this time! Funny how it all starts to fade so quickly. Oh, wait, we did stop and in fact we had dinner at the truck stop. Eating in truck stops is not my favorite thing to do but at this point, I didn't have much choice.
(Later I would realize that I have left behind my book "Under the Tuscan Sun" which I was planning on reading on the bus. I'll have to go out and buy this book again as I have yet to read it.)
We bring all our purchases up to our hotel room and head down to the bar. As usual, Aldo is bartending and Bob is hanging out, too. Bob buys us some drinks and Aldo makes a special one for us. It was some sort of Cognac and was really strong. Then he took a spoonful of sugar and drizzled some of the drink on it and spoon fed us the concoction! How funny. But the sugar really was interesting with it. Hung out there for a while--longer than usual since we knew we could finally sleep in tomorrow!
Info on Santa Croce: http://www.mega.it/eng/egui/monu/xbasilic.htm