Fun in Florence - The David

No Shopping Bags!
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Today we went shopping, kind of - we took a shuttle to the PRADA outlet, huge warehouse store FULL of bags, cloths, shoes, etc. Prices were not bad but the dollar being what it is still not a steal so we ended up leaving with nothing. Next we went to what is called THE MALL - it is an outlet for italian brands such as Gucci, Armani, Fendi, etc. Still nothing for Erin and Lizzie who went back to Florence bagless but Charlotte did find a scarf and a shiny purple coat!. That night we were thinking of staying in but about 10:00pm we got hungry and decided to find some food. When we walked out of our hotel the street was so crowded with people you could hardly walk - lot's of people out enjoying Friday night. We found a restaurant and ordered some pasta, coca-cola light (Erin) agua naturale (Lizzie) and wine (Erin, Lizzie and Charlotte). The italian wine has been good but not quite up to Napa Valley standards. After dinner and dolci (tirimisu and strawberries) we went for a walk around the town, there was so much action happening at 11:00pm we were amazed, there were street vendors, musicians, singers and even a mime. In one piazza there was a huge carousel! We had a lot of fun watching a man who had a HUGE English Bulldog following him, he was an older guy who was obviously out looking for amore and of course all the girls wanted to pet the bulldog so the man got a lot of attention as well. We did pet the bulldog but were able to get away without talking to the guy!

Who put these tomatoes on my plate?
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Today we saw DAVID - the sculpture is absolutely incredible, it is at least 25 feet tall and depicts the moment following David's defeat of Goliath - guess they fought naked in those days! You could spend hours looking at this statue marveling that is was carved out of a single block of marble and took nearly two years to finish. David used to stand in the piazza outside the Ufizi Museum but was moved to it's current location in the late 1800's which is a small museum called the Academia Galleria, it is also an art school There are several other works of Michelangelo displayed here, mostly unfinished sculptures. Some look like the person is trying to crawl out of the block of marble - this is the way Michelangelo worked, he could supposedly see the figure trapped in the marble and would then set it free, he used no models, drawings or plaster molds as other artists did, it was awesome to see