Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Day of the Beautiful People
Tuesday, June 6
Buongiorno from Firenze on the supposed Day of the Devil, 06-06-06. Our tour manager renamed the day the Day of the Beautiful People because that is what she likes to call our group. Many of the ladies of the group have purchased Ciao Bella shirts since we arrived in Italy to reinforce the image.
Today we had a full day to explore the city of Florence. The highlight of the day for me was a guided walking tour of the city. Italy only allows licensed Italians to give tours, which is kind of funny considering how many people are on the streets selling Rollex watches and Prado bags. No matter though, our guide was excellent. He took us around the rather small city and talked about its rich history with Michelangelo, Galileo Galilee, Machiavelli, and the Medici family among others. Like most of the cities we’ve visited, the vast majority of people in the city are tourists.
The four amigos (me, Donna, Bonny, Steph) tracked down an awesome little bakery for lunch—not before Donna had her 17th-20th scoops of gelato at 10:22 AM of course—that was a little bit away from the tourist traps. We enjoyed a sit and some pizza and fresh deli sandwiches. The next task was to find a café our guide told us about that had free Internet. That didn’t work out as well. Shortly after admitting defeat, Bonny exasperatedly turned to me and said, “WHERE are we going and WHAT are we doing?” A presumably American woman turned around and looked at us and could not hold in the laughter. Her family had just left after an 8 day visit and she could empathize. It was a fun, shared moment. WHERE did we go and WHAT did we do? Gelato, of course!
This evening we were treated to a Tuscan dinner, complete with a performance from an Opera singer. The meal was five courses I believe though the wine should count as a course as well because it was free-flowing. For my money, the best course was the antipasta buffet. The other courses were pasta and lasagna (one course, these Italians do it right!), salad, roast beef of some sort, and a flamed Alaskan cake or something, i.e. ice cream cake. On the way to dinner, we got a group photo taken for Contiki. We also got some nice shots of the four amigos as well as new friends from the tour.
Emily posted a comment saying she didn’t see new photos on Snapfish – is anyone checking out the photos there? I’ve gone back and added pictures to the ‘I need an editor!’ post. This morning we are preparing to leave for Rome for our last two days with the Contiki group. Two days until the World Cup starts, are you ready?
Andrew 3:17 AM