Florence

Outside Florence, the Tuscan hills are full of beautiful villages with towers and castles and ancient ruins. In another direction, on flat land, there are non-stop family plant nurseries with the most meticulously groomed specimen plants that I have ever seen. They create lots of contorted shapes, I even saw small trees trained to have crowns that formed the shape of four bells. The places that sell 'yard art' have MUCH more imaginative and beautiful things that we are used to seeing.
Florence is famous for many things, one is the River Arno that runs right thru the center. This river flooded in the '60's and caused terrible damage and the high water mark can still easily be seen on church walls. Only one bridge in Florence was not destroyed in WWII. That bridge is very much an ancient landmark, on lots of postcards, etc..It has little shops along the sides.
With the very tiny narrow streets, motorscooters are really popular as you can see. These scooters were parked along the sidewalk that ran parallel to the River Arno.
In Florence, the plaza areas between buildings often have statues like this entertaining one of a gunfight just next to the Hotel Balestri on the River Arno.
The lamp posts along the river are very cool and an interesting contrast to this modern bridge. This church has a really ugly statue of Dante outside on the left of the steps.

Poor woman, she was really really upset about something. I have no idea what, but she was raising cain to the Italian police, in Italian who listened patiently. She didn't seem to have a purse or bag, so it may have been snatched or something. The tourist hot spots were almost unbearably crowded since it was July and there were signs about that said to beware of pickpockets. People on scooters will snatch purses too. Tourists often have money and passports, both highly desirable and gypsys are known across Europe as pickpocket experts.
There is one monster big cathedral in Florence refered to as The Duomo. It is made from 3 colors of marble. This photo only shows a small part of it. It was a pretty hot day when we were there and there were just too many summer tourists in my opinion.








Hi from Florence Italy...the land of many tourists in July ! Harry and I were here in Sept before and it was not crowded like it is today. Sara and I canceled our hotel in Florence and decided to go "no brainer" and ride in with the Wind Surf people and go ahead and ride back tonight with them tothe boat to spend the night since this boat trip is not big crowds, but small groups of nice people. And our meals and all are included and the boat accomodations are so wonderful. The captain says that the Windsurf is the most sq footage per passenger than any "cruise" ship he knows of. It is nothing like Carnival or Priness or those kinds of experiences. We will stop in Pisa on the way back.
I am at a internet shop in Florence and we have tried two computers here and neither will read my text file on the diskette. Makes me crazy, after I went to the trouble to type it and all. Maybe it is the language difference. I will save it in some other formats besides .txt on the boat and maybe next trry on dry land. I have just about used up the one hour of boat web time.

I ducked into a paper shop to get some nice printed papers for Carol McCaul and myself and there was a couple in there from Knoxville, turns out they are fruiends of my sisters in Knoxville, Sheryl and Earl Taylor from their church, Cedar Springs. How about that.

On my long disk file that I canàt open I tell avout sitting at dinner next to a couple from Mobile who know everyone I know in Mobile, and they thought they were the only people from Alabama in Nice France at that moment. They bought the Wind Surf cruise at a charity auction.

OK, gonna let Sara use part of the internet time, she is sitting right here.
L. PS excue typos, it is italian keyboard and delete doesnàt work rightm, notr backspace, and to v correct takes lots of time.