Two Fridays ago we went to Florence in order to see David. Brian had bought us tickets online, which enabled us to bypass the line that stretches down the block. The Friday travel days are a little tricky, as they require us to take a shuttle from the ship to downtown Livorno (free), then a bus to the Livorno train station (one euro), and then a train to our final destination (12.60 euros this past Friday). Also, none of these steps are exactly intuitive for the first-time traveler, as you have to buy your bus tickets at the unmarked newsstand across the street from the bust depot. We (and by we, I mean Cody and Brian, who I always refer these people to) end up serving as Unofficial Livorno Guides to the passengers, sweaty and confused and with a slightly dawning sense that they were duped by whoever told them that getting to Florence would be "easy," who are dropped off on the square with us.
Since we weren't scheduled to see David until 1:30, we wandered around Florence a little bit when we got off the train. We passed through the square and spent a long time looking at the statues and the duomo, acting out our favorite scenes from "A Room With A View."* After much picture taking and Helena Bonham Carter-impersonating**, we wandered through the side streets and somehow ended up at the Borsolino shop. I say "somehow" but inevitably with Brian we end up at some high end store where all of the sudden you find yourself thinking that it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if you dropped 900 Euro on a handmade suit. I don't mean this last statement to come across like I'm complaining, it's just that I'm highly susceptible to parting with my money, especially when the beseecher is an elderly Italian tailor waving a cigarette and measuring tape. But this place was great! Borsolino, for you philistines who don't know, is the company that makes high-end fedoras worn by the likes of Al Capone. They also sell shirts, which were on sale before the fall line comes in. Each of the guys bought a shirt that makes the wearer look like a million bucks.
Then we went and grabbed a slice of pizza at one of the pizza joints dotting the Floretine square. It wasn't great, but it was cheap, which was what we were after.
Then we got to see David, which was tremendous. I had looked up a few facts about the statue on the internet the night before, so I felt equipped to give a tour. I talked about how the statue was carved from a flawed piece of marble, was started by somebody else forty years before Michelangelo got the commission to do it, the pseudoscience of art restoration, the crazy guy that attacked the statue with a hammer in 1991, and how Michelangelo chose to depict David not in the typical pose of action, but rather in the moment before or after he killed Goliath (the director of the Accademia and I both think it's the moment before, but feel free to have your own opinion). Swept up in Michelangelo-fever, I purchased a copy of "The Agony and The Ecstasy" for 11 euro. I am thirty pages in, and already my understanding of the great master has deepened.
The ride back was uneventful, except we shared the crowded bus ride home with a hateful family from Pennsylvania. The college-age daughter had studied abroad in Florence before and was acting as tour guide for the rest of her gene pool. She was annoyed at everything: her mother's inability to move down the aisle, her younger sister's refusal to sit on the small ledge of the seat taken up by the younger sister's boyfriend, the elderly Italian women who continued to push their way onto the bus at each stop, the low rush numbers for Kappa at Lehigh, and how "the jackass" sitting in an aisle seat was oblivious to her urgent need for him to move into the empty window seat to his left, even though she never made any attempt to communicate with him. We escaped at the Livorno square and parted ways- we to our ship, they to their unhappiness.
*We didn't really do this, but I wish we had
** We didn't really do this, either
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