The next leg of our journey took us to Florence, Italy.

The sites we visited in and around Florence are listed in yellow at left.

Click on them for more information and pictures.

In Florence we stayed in the Hotel Patrizia both years.  This is a family run hotel with very spacious rooms just a block away from the River Arno.  The hotel is actually three floors up, and the only realistic way up for your luggage is on the very small elevator (most elevators in Europe are small by our standards).  One person and their luggage should be able to fit at a time, so it will probably take the whole group about a half hour to get up to the hotel.  At this point in the trip, lugging your suitcase up all those stairs is darn near impossible, so take the lift. 

The rooms are clean and big and offer wonderful views (we had a view of the Duomo!).  Keep in mind that most of the staff doesn't speak fluent English, so brush up on some Italian.  Luigi, the proprietor of the hotel does speak English and was a great resource for directions, suggestions for dinner, etc.  Below are some pictures of the rooms and the views from the rooms.  I was in a quad room which was HUGE...lots of room for all the suitcases.

Little did we know but in 2003, we were in town during a national holiday, which means a lot of shops are closed, and a lot of people will be visiting the city.  June 2nd is the Anniversary of the Republic, which would sort of be like 4th of July in the U.S. (Or so we were told by an Italian stall owner in the market area).  We didn't know about this holiday, and we happened to catch a small parade! 

In addition to keeping track of national holidays keep in mind shopping hours and dining hours.  Shops in Italy (not all, but most) observe a sort of "siesta" between 1pm and 3:30pm most weekdays.  They are very lax about their hours and they may not be open Saturday afternoons, Sundays and maybe even Mondays.  This is true of some galleries as well, so make sure things are open on days you plan to visit them. 

There are people selling things all over Florence, in the markets, around the Uffizi, on Ponte Vecchio at night etc.  Some things are cheap sunglasses, some things are interesting trinkets, and other things aren't for sale, but just street entertainment.  They create gorgeous chalk drawings, play musical instruments, dress as mimes etc.  Kind of like New Orleans actually! 

As you probably know, Italy is not really in favor of President Bush or the war in Iraq.  They are not hostile to Americans or anything like that but they definitely have an opinion.  I found some interesting graffiti on a wall in Florence that I thought would be interesting to capture.  It reads in Italian: "Bush terrorista sei il primo della lista," which translates in English to: (literally) "Terrorist Bush you are the first of the list"  (With help from multiple translation devices on the internet etc.)  It was just interesting to get a view of the war other than our own.

The next and last "Around Town" thing I want to show you is the police of Florence.  The carabinieri are the military police, the La polizia are state police, and the Vigili Urbani are the municipal police...we mostly saw the carabinieri, and it seems that they are all there to just smile and look nice.  They will stand and have pictures taken with you and everything.  No big guns, except a few at night carry M-16s.  It's not an intimidating scene at all- it's just like they plucked up male Italian models and said hold this at night.  Here is an example of a friendly carabinieri near the Pallazo Vecchio, smiling at our teacher...little did he know, I was trying to take a picture of his horse!!