Day 9 – Viareggio to Florence

We got up, had breakfast, and sped off to Florence. It was supposed to take an hour 30 minutes but it only took about an hour because I wanted to get rid of the rental car, so I went ludicrous speed. I logged 300 miles of accident free, nobody dead, European driving. We got to Hotel Croce de Malta at noon.

This gargoyle thing was in the hotel lobby and Cash told me that is what he saw every morning when he woke up and looked toward my bed. He is probably not wrong, but his joke gets 2/5 stars from me, and 5/5 from Cash.

This is the view from right outside our hotel. The plaza is called the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella, and the statue is called the Obelisk of Turtles. It is made of white marble, which they may have sourced from the Mountains of Versillia (which I posted about yesterday.) Many historical interpretations of obelisks are that they are phallic symbols. When I saw this statue for the first time, all I could think about was how fucking pissed I would be if I was an average Roman living several centuries ago and someone made me drag white marble down from the Mountains of Versillia to Florence so that they could build a big dick in a park.

After we checked in, we walked down to the Duomo di Firenze. We decided to wait in line to get in, and it was worth it. The whole time I was trying to figure out who made the statues inside but it’s a little confusing. Michelangelo was commissioned to do 12 statues but he took too long on the first one and they fired him and he got pissed and left town. The one he partially made got moved to a museum. Donatello apparently did a bunch and may have overseen the making of this one:

I dunno. Maybe we saw some statues they made, and maybe we didn’t. Whatever the case, I bet they did a good job. 5/5.

The painting on the dome is of The Last Judgement. Vasari started painting it in 1572 but then he died and three other guys finished it. Some think the quality of work is uneven because there were different artists using different painting techniques. I mean it looks fine to me. Plus it’s like 500 feet above the floor so it’s hard to see. I bet it’s also pretty dangerous to paint that high up. I would have just given everyone their money and a pat on the back, and told the critics that if they didn’t like it they could go up there and do it themselves. Some people are dicks for no reason. 5/5 stars.

We went to eat at a really nice Italian restaurant and the waiter brought us cookies once we were finished. Cash popped one in his mouth, and it turned out that it was a pistachio cookie. He is severely allergic to pistachios. We went back to the hotel to grab the EpiPen and went up to the bar on the roof. Here is the beautiful sunset over Florence while I nervously waited to stab my son in his leg with the EpiPen:

He didn’t have a reaction, so that is great news. The view was 2/5 stars because I was not having fun. Tomorrow we are taking a train to Rome, which will be our last stop. We will be there for five days, however, so you are going to have to deal with my shitty blog until Monday night. Deal with it.