David's Diary: Saturday, June 15, 2002
Florence Part III
Giardino di Boboli
On the south side of Ponte Vecchio we find a small restaurant, off the beaten tourist path. Rested after a pleasant lunch we walk to Giardino di Boboli. The Italian-style terraced garden is behind the Pitti Palace. We walk past the palace and enter the gardens the back way. We stop for a rest and while the children play cards, Karalee and I lie down on a couple of stone benches and have a quick nap. Soon we are awake and walk a few kilometers through the garden. We search for shady paths as we all find the heat difficult to deal with.
Piazza della Signoria
After an enjoyable few hours, we leave the garden and cross Ponte Vecchio once again. We follow the crowds and find ourselves in the Piazza della Signoria. This is the same square where we listened to the open air concert last night. By daylight, the square is crowded and we gather around Palazzo Vecchio, the old palace that was the sight of last night's concert.
Michelangelo's David
We marvel at Michelangelo's statue of David, but recognize that this is a copy and not the real thing. We continue around the square and take in more of the buildings and sculptures that are featured. Slowly we leave, making our way back to the train station.
Countryside from the train
We walk the back streets of Florence, visit the vast open air market, and then arrive back at the train station. We only have a short wait before we are once again traveling through the hills around Florence on our way back to the Mediterranean. We arrive back in Pisa just in time to do grocery shopping, but having arrived late after our day of sight-seeing in Florence we miss the last bus to the marina. Tired, we all shuffle back to the train station where we have a long wait for a taxi. We arrive back onboard Dragonsinger as the sun sets and quickly put away the groceries and make a quick dinner before we all collapse into bed.
