DAY 42: Bells & Balls

You would think waking up to church bells is romantic… well it’s not. It’s infuriating. Especially when they start at quarter ‘til, on the hour, quarter after, etc… And in case you were wondering, the remodel next door is making excellent progress… it sounds like Transformers are battling right outside my window.  Aggravation won, and I pried myself out of bed and into the shower, which is the best way to wake up since the entire hotel shares ONE hot water heater. I can count the number of hot showers I’ve had on one finger… While standing downstairs on the street, waiting for “The Harv” to get his cappuccino, we watched the gypsies come out of the woodwork… one woman walked around in Nikes, with a magazine cutout of 2 kids, pretending they were her own… “My starving children! Please save my starving children!!!” Honey, if your chillin are baby GAP models, ain’t anybody starving. The Umblella,umblella,umblella,umblella,umblella guys are a party in the rain… I want to buy one so I can beat them away with it. There really aren’t that many beggars, but the “leather mafia” rape you with their Romanian-Italian eyeballs and ssssnake-like, breathy comments. One guy practically drug me to his “shop” around the corner and down a dark alley, with a police car parked outside… “Oh! Yes please! I’d love to try on a gangbang for size...”

The wolf pack roamed across the street to the Museo di Duomo to check out some rocks… errr, carved rock, called statues, of important people, by important people, for important people. Many had been removed from the Duomo and were replaced by replicas… p.s. There is a big debate over which Duomo is better, Siena or Florence. I think Siena blows Florence out of the water, but I like pretty things. Florence’s “outside” is gloriously fancy, but the inside is a snooze.  I DO have to say, that when I walk around, and see the Duomo “down the street,” I have to pinch myself… it doesn’t even seem real, it is so big and superlative.  But I’m no art critic! Statues really have to have something “goin’ on” to catch my attention. Grown men in robes with beards and Birkenstocks flirt with my attention span… I like wrestling and animals and muscles… I wonder what my astrologist (and/or therapist) would have to say about that?

The stone-faced lurkers were making me hungry and our favorite kabobs were beckoning us… beef this time, extra spicy and they put French fries in it- gross! As I picked it apart, I threw the fries out into the street for the devil birds… they were on those like hyenas on a water buffalo.  It was my own fault really, because just like Lays potato chips, you can’t have just one… I think they have mating calls and chow calls (similar to men), because a flock of exhaust ridden, dirt pillows came plummeting down. My personal space was being invaded, so I LITERALLY punted a bird across the street… top of foot to bird-belly and POOF! Feathers. Everywhere. As they all cowered on opposing windowsills, cooking up a plan of attack, I decided to scoot before I got my ass Pearl Harbored.

With a few hours to kill, I hit up the food market as it was closing… spilled a carton of pine nuts into a box of figs… “Francis” was real happy with me… but I bought grapes, pears, apples and bananas from her… she got over it. Back at the hotel waited irregular verbs and congigations up the ying-yang… Italian in the afternoon sounds like a lullaby. Immediately following “Let’s-Talk-Romance-101,” we scooted over to the Palazzo Medici to check out the digs of the rich and famous circa 15^th century Renaissance… on the way a Rotweiller puppy and a blackn’tan weiner dog met, played and flirted- they were the exact same size and color and it was hilarious. Dogs in general make me a happy camper, and I love how much Italians adore their pooches. INTERMISSION: So… Granduca Cosimo de’Medici, a loan shark who looks like Joe Pesci, started a family fortune for the kiddies “Ferdinando, Lenny and Squiggy.” The families “symbol” somehow became a “ball,” so there were “balls” everywhere you looked… even naked chicks in frescos had four boobs.  This place would take up an entire episode of MTV’s “Cribs”…

Apparently the BEST gelato is from GROM- a company started by two buddies (now multi-millionaires), using fresh, organic produce daily… they’ve even gone as far as purchasing their own dairy cows to get fresh milk everyday… hazelnut and pistachio for me… definitely good, but our little diamond on the corner is still my fav… Dirty laundry is no longer an option. I have yet to physically place my clothes inside of a washing machine and press start (42 days later… barf.) Kate and I trucked around to find an ATM and Washn’Dry… her debit card wouldn’t work, so I had 15 Euros to buy 3 loads of laundry (3.50 a pop) and a bottle of wine… for our last load, I had a bunch of 1 and 2 cent coins, so I exchanged them at a pizzeria across the street. One 5 cent coin in… and 2 tokens pop out! Another 5 cent coin… 2 more tokens! 5 cent coin… THREE tokens! 75 cents later, I had 80 Euros worth of tokens… EIGHTY EUROS! We hit the laundry lottery!  I was handing tokens out to kids from New Jersey like they were lollipops at the bank drive-thru… Everyone in the wolf pack did laundry, on me… I considered sitting outside the laundry mat, prostituting tokens, gypsy style…

Best current discovery: breadless PB&J… grapes dipped in peanut butter. You are totally going to try it… 2 more days in the frenzy of Firenze! Ciaociaociaoumblellaumblellaumblella.