Florence in summer

I have always loved Florence with its narrow roads, lovely architecture, museums, great restaurants, gelato shops,etc. I have to say, though, Florence in the summer is a big pain. The city is overrun with tourists. It's hot and humid and there are lines for all of the major sites.

Jacob and I stayed at a hotel near Santa Maria Novella, a relatively central location which enabled us to enjoy much of the city be walking. The Residenzia Belli, however, left a lot to be desired, cramped rooms, unfriendly staff, bugs, and strange odors. I would not recommend this hotel to anyone. We were particularly not happy with the fact that the website advertised Internet access in every room to find out that there was a communal computer in the lobby of another hotel that we could only use in 30 minute intervals.

Actually, wi-fi access in Florence was really limited. Coming from Paris, where even the parks have free wi-fi, this took a little getting used to. After a few days, we finally found out that the Italian government passed a law a few years ago that required all places offering Internet access to register the identify of all of their users. Whenever, you went into an Internet cafe, you would have to present your passport. This wasn't particularly important, except that Jacob had to finish some school stuff and that we needed to find accommodations for our stay in Rome.

We found, however, that we really enjoyed just walking around the city, staying in the shade and finding gardens when we could. My favorite was the site of the Duomo towering over the narrow side-streets. Jacob and I hiked up to San Miniato to get a look at the city at sunset one evening.

We also got a tour of Santa Croce, which was not nearly as crowded as the Duomo. The small museum in the back was blessedly free of tourists and we spent some time admiring Brunelleschi's chapel.




One thing I noticed when we were walking around and never got a chance to ask an Italian about: In many places we found large, bristling groups of padlocks around iron grates. Many of them had initials carved into them. There was a whole bunch of them on the Ponte Vecchio and in San Miniato.

In the end, Jacob and I wanted to get away from the masses of tourists so we decided to rent a scooter for a day and take it into Chianti. We found a place with a good rate for rental, though the shop reeked of wet dog because they had a giant doberman locked behind a gate inside. The landscape of Chianti is really idyllic, rolling hills with vineyards and olive orchards dotted with picturesque villas and towns.



We brought along a picnic lunch of sandwiches and fruit assembled from the vendors in the Mercato Centrale that we ate on the side of a hill overlooking a vineyard.

Mostly, we had a great time. The one thing that marred the day was that we wrecked the scooter making a sharp left turn. It wasn't a bad accident. Jacob ended up being thrown from the bike and rolling a few feet on the road. I ended up sliding with the bike until it stopped. There were a couple of other people on the road on motorcycles who helped us up. And we were able to patch ourselves up with our first aid kit.

And, it being Chianti, the spot the we wrecked in was an impossibly beautiful intersection.



We were really lucky, though, and did not end up with any serious injury. Since I slid with the bike, my left knee ended up being pretty scraped up. Thoughtfully, we had dressed in long pants. So it wasn't too bad. It looked pretty gross, though, with raw skin and massive bruises all over the knee. Writing this two weeks later in Cairo, my knees almost better. The scabs are mostly gone and the bruising's pretty much disappeared.

I have a really gross picture of it if anyone wants me to send it to them.