Health updates:
a) Josie cut a wisdom tooth.
b) Matt has had a bladder infection and is seeing good results from medication he got from the pharmacist. Standard protocol here is to go to the pharmacist first and the doc second.
c) Tour guide twisted his ankle.
d) Emily has had some allergy issues.

We had what the Brits call a lie-in meaning a late start. We woke to rain, grabbed breakfast @ the hotel, and walked to a place in the road wide enough for the bus to pick us up. Maybe a five minute walk. Off we headed to Florence. We traveled the same narrow switchbacks we came in on until we could get on the highway. We passed thousands of small terraced fields and gardens, and pastel farm houses. All shrouded in low lying clouds, fog, mist, and rain.

Three hours, one ancient aqueduct, and many tunnels later, we arrived in Florence, checked into our rooms, and had almost three hours to ourselves. Murphy, Josie, and I went to a couple of cute shops and visited the Gucci Museum. Dan, M & Em took off in the other direction and pretended to have a more interesting three hours than we did…but that is highly suspect. We all met back at the hotel at three for a 2.5 hour walking tour of the old part of the city. The highlight was seeing Michelangelo’s David as well as his Prisoners, but we were also dumbstruck by the sheer size and color (pink, green, and white marble) of the Duomo which boasts the first dome built since Roman times. The major sites are packed, just like in Rome, so we feel lucky to be here this early in the season.

Our guide, Jamie, had prepped us for all the Renaissance splendor during the bus ride. Seems Florence was the driving force and center of this very important era. In the span of 125 years, it went from a thriving city of 10,000,  mostly working in the cloth industry, to a booming 125,000. To oversimplify by lightyears, rich merchants (with excess $) from Florence encouraged and sponsored scholarly study of ancient texts that described the sophistication of life in Etruscan and Roman times. Over time, Greek wisdom and philosophy was reexamined also and even later Jews expelled from France needed a place to go, so they moved to the city known for its open mindedness and free thinkers. Slowly it became The Place to Be for an enlightened approach to medicine, art, science, philosophy, sculpture, etc. Out crept the Middle Ages and in snuck the Renaissance. Don’t quote me on any of this.