New Years in Florence
Italy Part 4
If you've known me for any length of time, I've told you my Paris New Years Eve story. It's my best one because of how cataclysmically everything went wrong. If I haven't, as a summary: no fireworks, drunk guy dumped a full beer on my head, travel buddy sick and spewing everywhere, closed metro, no hostel, riot police, expensive emergency hotel, and spending the whole next day in a McDonalds. This one promised to be a lot nicer.
We spent the day just walking around Florence, especially around the farmers market and the leather stalls. I bought a really nice scarf... with Steve's money...as his Christmas gift to me. His original plan had been to purchase a giant metal Roman centurion helmet, complete with red plume, just because he knew I would have to wear it on every flight as it wouldn't fit in my backpack - so thoughtful. I was able to find and enjoy my favourite panini place in the world, Antico Sosta. For me, this is the taste of Italy and Italy apparently tastes like really good pesto.
As it started getting darker the streets got more and more busy. The street venders were selling selfie sticks in full force and the horse drawn carriages slowed down rather than trample the gathering crowds. Steve and I settled down with our doners to watch the craziness. The main Piazzas all had concert starting, but it being Italy, no one knew what time they started. Every person I asked differed by half an hour so around 11 we headed up to the Piazza de Michelangelo for the aerial view of the festivities.
In Canada, when we have fireworks there's a roped off section where the pyrotechnics organize stuff, then a big space of emptiness, then the section where the spectators sit. No such system here. As we walked along the streets you would just hear loud pops, like gun shots of cherry bombs being thrown against the stones and when we got up the Piazza it was on a whole other level. The crowds knew where not to stand, mainly in the are where multiple things were colourfully exploding. Even yelling it was hard to hear the person next to you, so we just communicated with hand signals to make our way to the ledge and watch the lights detonating across the city. Multiple Chinese tourists had brought along their floating paper lanterns but it kinda wrecks the 'Tangled' moment when the thing pulls a Hindenburg, becomes a flying fireball and starts to head back towards the crowd. The countdown started and at midnight we broke out the champagne! All around Florence little pockets of fireworks went up - gorgeous.
And of course, Steven burped in the New Year, honestly I could probably make an album of him burping next to national monuments, or waving his hand in front of my landscape photos. Mom's very proud.
We wound our way back down the hill and across the bridge, still hearing the celebrations and frequent bursts. In the Piazza della Signoria there was a classical orchestra performing, which required no translation at all to enjoy. The played the Blue Danube Waltz, which even if you don't know the name if you've seen Bugs Bunny or anything, you know the song, and soon the whole crowd was dancing. I had a less than willing partner but even he humoured me for a bit. We were just catching the tail end of the show but they did an encore of the Offenbach Can Can - yes that one. Happy New Year!
Maybe not as good a story, but that's fine by me.
The next day wasn't much to speak of so I'll just summarize it here. We walked around, Steve played with pigeons, and we talked to a couple drunk Australians on segways. We went into Dante's house - there really shouldn't be a kids version of Dante's Inferno, just saying. There was the minor hiccup of me mixing up 12 hour and 24 hour time for our flight so we did get a very speedy Italian car ride to the airport - I've never been so thankful for someone's crazy driving and we got there in time. Next stop Spain.