Enough of this Balogna; I'm off to Florence...

So there I was, tootling through the Tuscany hillside, with a brief stopover to change trains in Bologna. Thankfully short; the cold seems to be increasing as the trip continues, as one might expect, but hopefully as I head south things will get somewhat better. So south I head.
Florence is the first place I see the guide books warn about pickpockets, miscreants and ne'er do well's lurking around the train station, so I detrain on my guard. But the cold has followed me to Florence, and the seedier side of the population does not appear to want to brave the weather for the meager tourist trade this time of year. I escape unscathed, my pockets unpicked, fully creant and e'er well.
On the train trip down, I cosulted the RS bible for places to stay as usual, and programmed the three more likely ones into Teri. I'm early enough into town this time to be able to hit some sights if I get checked in quick enough. One promising place is, get this, the Oblate Sisters of the Assumption. I love assuming, so I'm going with my initial guess that the definition of 'oblate' in this case is 'a layperson dedicated to religious life' as opposed to 'having the shape of a spheroid generated by rotating an ellipse about its shorter axis'. Although, the latter does seem to be the classic nun shape, at least in 'The Sound of Music', Julie Andrews not withstanding.
As it stands, the closest hotel to the train station is also the closest hotel to the think of things: the Hotel Sole. I decide that if it even approaches the Milan hotel in cleanliness (let's call that -2dB Speronari) I'm there, and off to get down to the business of touristing. At first sight, it does not look promising. The lane is about ten feet wide, with tall buildings leaning out toward each other, blocking my GPS signal. The hotel is located on the third floor (that's three up from the street) of a derelict building. The ground and next two floors up are empty and under dusty construction. But, to my suprise, the hotel, once entered, is delightfully clean, and super cheap due to the season and construction. I toss my stuff in the room, and bug out to see the big sights. The Oblate Sisters will have to wait for next time (I assume).
So I've been reading this 'Agony and the Actsacy' book, not sure if I have mentioned that yet. About Michaelangelo and his life and art, which has a lot to do with Florence. So I'm running around looking at the little touches the author put in here and there (statues on corners, bridges, etc), and around the corner I run up against the Duomo. Well, not literally. It's kind of too big for that. And no, that's not my picture, but I do have plenty. Again I cannot upload from my camera at this cafe. But the duomo was, well, big, as you can see. I climbed aalllllll the way up (463 steps) to the tip of that dome, right to where the tippy top cone with the ball on it is, just in time for stunning sunset views of Florence and Tuscany. I can see why so many people come to visit and never leave.

The Duomo done, I clamber down the 463 steps to terra firma, and head up the street to the Accademia museum. The home of David. The Michaelangelo scupture. A whole couple of chapters in the book. I head in, and, unlike the common folk rushing to see the masterpiece, I take my time in the first gallery that holds four unfinished 'Prisoners' statues by Michaelangelo. I evaluate each in turn, checking out all 360 degrees, as the novel harps on how Michaelangelo preferred sculpture as it is the true art form that must be perfect fom all angles. This doesn't really hold true when the rear of the work is a big untouched hunk of marble. So, I head on down to where the main attraction is:

This guy is big! 17 feet, they say. I'd hate to see Goliath. But I do get to peruse this one in all 360 degrees, and from all sorts of other angles (no, Sussex, not that one) on an interactive computer exhibit from Stanford university, where the whole thing is scanned in 3D.

But, after fifteen or twenty minutes, I have long exhausted my patience for looking at a naked man that isn't in the mirror, and head back to the hopping part of town. I wander around the central shopping district, about four large blocks with lots of little streets, nooks and crannies, filled with high end shops and low end street vendors. The shops include about 90% of the advertisers in a typical issue of Cosmopolitan; the vendors sell "the same handbag - for you, ten euro", and other knockoff leather, electronics etc. Nothing much is catching my eye (well, other than a few $2000 watches and the tall high heeled boots walking all over the place), so my wallet escapes unscathed. Until I decide that, in spite of the chilly weather, it's time for more gelato. I pop into a ritzy cafe and order a cone with three dollops. That would be, oh, fifteen euro!!! I double check that. Yes, the most expensive ice cream I ever hope to pay for. Yes, it was good, but let's be real. That's over twenty bucks. Almost my hotel rate.

Oh well. Even with that unexpected hit, I'm still up for a fancier than normal dinner, as the hotel was 30 euro per night. I have full on feast of mixed meats, pasta, wine, dessert, coffee, the only thing missing would be a date, I suppose. I read more Ecstacy and Agone instead. Then, suitably warmed up by a half bottle of rosso, I head back to bed so as to hammer through the remaining cornucopia of sights the next day.

Remember how I described the buildings as about ten feet apart? I go into my room, and directly across the street is the apartment of some young thing, practicing her dance moves in the mirror, obviously readying herself for a night of driving those young Italian boys crazy. I look at her (well, shame on me). She looks at me. She closes her shutters. Sigh. To be twenty again. Or rich. Or twenty and rich.

Maybe I wouldn't have to read while I eat.