Adventures of an Old Broad... Abroad: Buona Sera di Firenze e Siena

This morning at 7:00 I walked the long way of 500+ stairs to the beach and sat and looked at the water, boats and Positano and the surrounding mountains from the shores of Praiano which is all like something that couldn’t possibly exist – the way the buildings are perched precariously on the cliffs and the staircases that swirl around rock formations and the boats bobbing on the water. It’s just too beautiful. A few hours later and a train ride from Napoli and here we are in Firenze. And what a magical place this is. I forget how much I love it here until I come back. The streets are brimming over with activity: musicians of varying types and talents around every corner, street artists (tonight we saw a sidewalk chalk painting of the Girl with the Pearl Earring and one of the Mona Lisa), vendors and then you round the corner and see the Duomo in all of its magnificence and it just simply takes your breath away.

After we checked in, my sisters needed a break and I needed to get out and explore and finally found something I’ve looked for on previous visits but was unable to find until today – The rooftop bar with a view of the sunset from the Piazza Repubblica. It is really spectacular AND really pretty hard to find, but I persevered and remembered instructions from a friend years ago and it was definitely worth it. (You go in through a department store’s perfume section, up 4 flights on an escalator, through housewares and up a staircase . . . . Really!)

Anyway, after gathering my sisters we ate and walked and listened to music and saw the Ponte Vecchio and walked past the Uffizi and ate gelato and talked to some people from Indiana while someone was releasing paper lanterns from Piazza Michelangelo and it was all just so lovely.

The next morning we made it to the Accademia to see the David. I got up early and was lucky enough to get 3 tickets for later that morning because when we got there at 11:00, the line was insane. Spent our time taking it in and then back to the hotel to grab our bags and off for the bus to Siena. We had no sooner gotten into our hotel when the skies let loose and it rained incredibly hard, turning into hail – enough to blanket the streets and make horribly cold puddles full of little balls of ice. By the time we left for the bus station, it had luckily stopped raining and hailing so we had just the ‘balls of ice’ to deal with. Ha!

Now in Siena after an easy bus ride where we met a couple from LA who are here to study Italian. Boca Lupo! (Good luck in Italian or literally – Wolf mouth).