Monday 5th May

Florence and the quest for the Pinkie ring (Leon again)

The day started like any other, the sun came up, we had breakfast, everyone in the car and off. Well, looking forward that‘s how simple it looked to me. The reality is that I always forget I am travelling with two females and as they are carbon copies of each other, the delays are usually twice as long. So as I skulked around and waited for the hair and beauty routines to be completed, I punched the address of Stazione Centrale di Santa Maria Novella into the trusty GPS and in no time flat Karen had calculated our route and given me the ETA. (Karen is the voice of the GPS and she speaks with an Australian accent) The weather was overcast but dry and today’s top temperature was to be 19 c. As I mentioned earlier I have a personal check list of things I would like to achieve while in Italy and among them is to purchase a pinky ring as a momento of our visit.

After visiting Ponte Vecchio the first time I decided that it would be fitting that I should get the ring from one of the world’s most iconic jewelry places, the night before I consulted the guide book on where one should start such a quest and with the addresses and map references recorded we were ready to go, well almost, no we are, here are the beauty queens now. I had decided we would avoid toll roads today so Karen was navigating through a lot of smaller villages until we reached the highway, one can take the Autostrade however they are expensive and usually the time you have saved by travelling along at break neck speed, is lost queuing at either end to get on and off and pay.

The traffic was fairly light so we made it to Florence and parked in about two hours, we parked under the station as this was somewhere we were familiar with and I was sure we could wonder all over town and always find our way back. We arrived at about 12.30 pm and so everyone was ready for lunch, Belinda had read about a Trattoria in Florence that served good cheap local cuisine and was located in the middle of town. We found Ristaurante Del Mario and also discovered that a lot of other tourist had read the same guide book. Mario’s was a tiny establishment about 4 meters wide and twice as long with the counter and a very busy kitchen on one wall and table and chairs in every other vacant piece of floor on the other side. On our arrival we noted that there were a lot of folk just milling near the door, I went passed them and inside and realized why they were outside, Mario’s was chocker’s! Fabio at the counter appeared unaware of the chaos in his restaurant and asked me my name and how many I had to seat; he scribbled this on a large scrap of cardboard with all the other names and numbers and told me my table would be ready in 15 minutes, OK, Alorra.

We decided to have a look at the market we had walked past just across the Piazza, and to our delight discovered that we were in fact at Mercato Centrale which is renowned as the biggest food market in Europe. Our fifteen minutes were gone in no time, as we wondered through the market, Charlotte was grossed out by ducks and chooks that were missing all of their clothes but still had their nice faces attached to the otherwise cleaned and ready to cook bodies. We returned to Mario’s and enjoyed a very nice simple meal, shared with an Italian man who was squeezed on to the spare seat at our table.

Charlotte had a new experience here, not only did she eat with a strange Italian she also had her first encounter with a squat toilet,(we were going to save this experience for Vietnam but here it was in the middle of Florence) Charlie can be forgiven for what happened next as she had not had a chance to practice, but she came back to the table slightly shamed as she had managed to pee on her shoe in her effort to do the perfectly aimed squat, I am afraid that I could not offer any advice here as contrary to Belinda’s ravings my aim is always perfect and I never pee on my foot. (Sober) Thank god it was not number two’s she had to complete.

It was time we left the restaurant and headed for the first Jeweler on the list Torrini’s, according to the guide book had they been making jewelry in Florence for over 600 hundred years and so I thought they should get the first opportunity to provided me with that which I seek. Torrini’s was a very elegant shop where we were ushered into a private viewing room to view the Jewels, with much pomp and ceremony we were shown the full range of Uomo (men’s) rings, it only took a few seconds to realize that despite 600 + years of experience they were still shyte at making men’s rings, we left and arduously traipsed all over Florence gradually ticking off all the suggested Iconic jewelers off the list, while they were superb at things for the girls, men’s rings were in short supply and often the usual black onyx with a gold band. (Not my idea of a unique momento from Florence)

Up until now I had been avoiding Ponte Vecchio as I was sure in my mind that I would pay the tourists premium for purchasing on the bridge. But, to my surprise the bridge is exactly the place we should have been, the jewelers here are mainly goldsmiths and as it turned out produced beautiful work for both men and women, it only took four or five shops before the quest was at an end, after much encouragement from the fact that it was tax free and from a discount from the boss and oohs and aahs from the girls that worked there and Belinda and Charlotte, I was the owner of my first pinky ring.

With a successful quest under our belt it was time to think about heading back to the car and home, we stopped along the way and sampled a glass of Grappa from a bar and were very surprised that they cost 9 Euro’s each (ouch), and tasted like petrol.

Back at the car we punched home in the GPS and Karen awoke from her slumber and gave us the ETA of about 1 hour 30 minutes, yeah right! 4 hours later we were home. Karen had failed to let us know about the insane traffic we were about to encounter, Florence can only be likened to fish schools negotiating obstacles, as while the traffic moves in a general direction, there are no lanes to stay in and the only rule seems to be go where you have to go just don’t hit the thing in front of you. Stop signs mean niente (nothing) and stop lights were taken as only if it was convenient to stop. Forget about roundabout etiquette just enter and go with the flow. Then add a million or so Vespa’ that squeeze into every available space that might help them progress forward, throw in a Nonna or two on bikes and hundreds of double parked cars that seem to stop for mainly conversational purposes, and you are getting close to a picture of Florentine traffic, oops I forgot the trucks and the buses and the trams, and of course everyone is sending a text, and in a terrible hurry to get to their destination where they will probably sit and drink coffee for three hours. Our car has very conspicuous red number plates trumpeting to all of the other Italian cars that we are in fact French, given the rivalry with France and Italy Charlotte thought it prudent to make a sign which she placed in the window saying that we were not French but Australian, surprisingly you could see the occupants of other cars read the sign and there features would lighten with recognition and what appeared forgiveness. Hehehe ( in this traffic anything can help). Home at last ahhg. It is hard to know if train is better than car?????