Day 4... 6:15AM... Eyes open, in the shower, bags outside the door and down to breakfast. These breakfast buffets are all similar in their weirdness (to our American palates). But at this point in the trip we all gravitate toward our favorite things. There was more fruit available the further South we went. The process of breakfast is basically the same everyday though. We wander around bumping into these now familiar strangers and sharing quiet shy salutations and acknowledgments of our individual little journeys. I eat an egg and some yogurt and pound espresso until my entire body is vibrating. I leave breakfast every morning as though I'm ready to physically pull the bus to wherever we're off to next.
This day was full of adventure. First off, we boarded the bus for a short drive to the Galleria dell'Academia. Once parked, we were given a brief but stern warning about "gypsies". While being warned about gypsies is objectively funny, like something ripped from the pages of a European folktale, its not an unfounded concern. We pushed through the crowded narrow street full of tourists and indeed encountered a handful of dirty gypsies (sorry, they are dirty). We were ushered straight to the front of the line moments before the museum opened for the day.
There is a noticeable degree of security at lots of these places for obvious reasons, but it is also striking how little it is. Once through security, you walk about 40 feet to a large, arched marble room and suddenly you are confronted by "it".... I mean, there it is. The whooooole little thing. David's penis, in all its glory. The sheer volume of naked stone penises and butts that are constantly shoved in your face throughout these beautiful ancient cities is in such hilarious contrast to the volume of incomprehensibly huge and beautiful Catholic churches. How can you NOT find this funny?!?!
But I know, its about more than penises... There's also the muscular naked bodies, and crying children etched in stone for eternity that really force you to question what is wrong with us as a species... I'm kidding again. But this museum is also absolutely stuffed to the gills with amazing marble sculptures, and paintings and enough history to spend 6 months just learning about all of it. This was just our first of MANY stops, and after spending almost an hour making our way around and through the rooms, we were back out among the tourists. Florence was in the full swing of tourist season. It was crowded and HOT.
The Boyne City Vadnais' split from the group and hunted down a specific sandwich shop that Mason had heard about on the internet called "All' Antico de Venio". We waited in line for about 20 minutes for some exceeding average sandwiches, but it felt like a "win" anyway. We then wandered among some shops, setting an appointment at one to have our irises photographed (as a family), then on to a Swatch shop, Lego store which was very cool and eventually pausing in a cafe for, you guessed it, cocktails and gelato. While there I noticed a guy in a "Billy Strings" shirt and struck up a conversation with him. He was amazed to hear that we were FROM Billy Strings land, and though I don't "get-it" it was fun to make the connection.
We went back to the iris place to get our pics and then on to our meeting spot where we would walk back to the buss... Where was that again? Over here? Down that alley? Why won't the map work on my phone?!?!?! Oh god the sun is blazing hot and we're pouring sweat and in an angry panic that we are going to miss our---- Oh, there they are. Phew. We're not the last people there either. We cooled off next to a fountain with naked stone men showering, in the shadow of a church the size of a mountain and eventually made it back to the bus. Arrivederci Firenze!!!
Our next destination was Siena, a beautiful ancient city in the Tuscany region. On the way, we passed the house from the movie Gladiator that was supposed to be Russel Crowes place. I would've taken a picture but we passed it at about 60 mph on a winding mountain road.
Siena is one of the most beautiful places we visited. I marked this as a "place we gotta come back to". We checked into another very nice hotel (the NH) and were able to shower, change, and slam a quick espresso before meeting back in the lobby for our next excursion. mind you this is STILL DAY 4. While in the lobby, I noticed the obvious shape of a trombone case on the floor and struck up a conversation with its owner, "Paulo" a Portuguese jazz-trombonist who had attended Berklee School of Music and was running a jazz camp in Siena for the next week. Of course we became best friends for five minutes before our group was back out the door and on the bus.
Monteriggiono is almost like a fortified little mountain city. Picturesque and utterly captivating. It's what you imagine when you hear the word "Tuscany". It had shops, churches, cute little squares and cafes with amazing views of the Tuscan hills. We split up and wandered through the village sipping and tasting whatever we came across. The afternoon was feeling very romantic. The mountain air felt mercifully cool as the sun got lower in the sky. Yeah, I thought to myself, maybe I should move to Monteriggiono and open a drum shop...
We found some really cool little textile stores. Christie bought a shawl and I resisted the urge to buy myself an extremely custom pair of high-quality leather clown shoes. While we slowly made our way back to the bus, I snuck into one last café a slammed a Heineken while making best friends with one of the patrons. He loved jazz, and wanted me to bring my band back! My future in Monteriggiono was looking promising!
The day was starting to wind down, but first we had a 4 hour farm to table dinner at a vineyard just down the road. We were greeted in the limestone parking lot by Mirko (Miroslav) who was an extremely charismatic Romanian guy who obviously was born for this job. He moved us through the vineyard operations, to a wine tasting room and then up to our outdoor dining area where we ate and drank and ate and drank until we were all painfully full and probably the most drunk (as a group) we got all week... During this time we struck up a conversation with one of the small factions of our group consisting of a widow named Cindy, and her two grown kids. They had brought the ashes of their father with them and we developed a plan to sneak them into the Colosseum in Rome.
The cousins took turns tasting wine, and daring each other to try other things that may have been less palatable. It was a really nice dinner and I even got the recipe for the chickpea soup!
Back in the bus, Ursula urged us to have a sing-along. It was fairly forced initially and we couldn't really all agree on anything that we all knew the words to, but as drunk as everyone was, eventually we stammered our way through a few different verses of songs that I can't remember now. It was cute. Back at the hotel, I swore I never wanted to eat another thing, and was already too wine drunk to want a night cap. What a day!
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