We went to the sculpture display in front of the Duomo. Lots of lions, and a pedestal with four Venuses with multiple breasts (we should all be so lucky).

Several statues of Hercules doing violent things. 

What I am drawn to is the whimsical creatures that were used just to fill up space - the goats, gryphons, and grotesques.

The River Arno was scenic and the overlook crowded. Many artists had stands with art ranging from crap to very nice. I was tempted by a botanical drawing of a fuchsia. Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) where we were headed, has dozens of rooms bulging out from the walls of the bridge. It was crammed with jewelry stores and one beggar.

Along the streets are pushcarts filled with tourist items such as handbags or pashminas. They have a single axle and around midnight, they're pulled through the streets by muscled vendors. They open out to have walls, an awning, a table, and drawers under the table.

We spent the afternoon in the gardens of the Pitti Palace. Gravel paths wind under olive arbors, and the more open vistas are crunchy with statuary. You can see the hills of Tuscany over the red tile roofs of the city.

We saw green lizards in the knot garden and sat on a forbidden flower-dotted lawn to draw.

In the evening we wandered about, seeing Middle Eastern grocery stores, smooching teenagers, a plaza with a palace. The plaza hosted an encampment of gypsies, with long skirts or vest and white shirt and large mustache, who were sleeping in bedrolls propped against the wall. Florence at night is just as awake as Venice, but the people seemed younger, from high school through young adult. Lots of motorcycles, lots of walking around in the middle of the street and moving aside only when the cars got very close.

Breakfast at the Fish Market, long walk through the city, visit (but not by me) to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. In the gift shop were large purses made out of sea sponges! Camilla, Alice and I waited for Martin and Holly in a café where we worked on our sketchbooks and got more and more sleepy. Finally, it was slightly later than what we'd planned on.

We rushed back to the hotel where they'd allowed us to leave our luggage, and rushed to the ferry, and rushed to the train station. We sat there in sudden calm, watching people wash around us like a laundromat.

The train was very civilized, with seats grouped in fours around teeny tables. Outside, the farmland was just starting to sprout, probably wheat. Trees with white flowers and one that might have had green flowers. Farm buildings like cubes of cement.

Florence is lovely, lots of tall buildings and something that we now recognize as Italian.

We had a reservation at a youth hostel, five flights up a stairway with threatening notes pinned up at various places it indicating that the hostel's patrons might be a very very rowdy bunch.

A burly African dude greeted us and led us to a room marked "private," which was crowded with silent people texting, and mysterious stacks of things like mattresses, suitcases, bedding, bookshelves, and stuffed plastic bags. "Please wait," he said. We waited. Occasionally, people would bustle in, move a mattress or take a towel out of a bag, and leave again. Out the open window you could see down a narrow chute to a filthy alley. 

The dude came back after about twenty minutes. Very nervously, with much hemming and hawing, he said, "I must inform you ... the website said ... it was quite clear. Quite clear."

We stared at him, sensing impending doom but, in our exhaustion and foreignness taking a sudden dislike to him, the mysterious goings-on in the room, and the silent zombies texting all around us. He might have bad news for us but he was getting no help from us. He couldn't do it. He shifted stance and said, "I must talk to my manager," and left again. We waited.

He came back. "The website was quite clear."

We stared at him.

Finally, he blurted out his news. "There is an age restriction. Eighteen to 35. Because it gets noisy. We are going to have a party, it's Friday night, surely you can understand that."

We could not. We thought about the five flights of stairs, and of our luggage, and the fact that we wanted dinner and wanted it at once, if not sooner.

After some bickering, he allowed Martin to use the "staff only, this means you!" computer to find another lodging.

We walked back in the direction of the train station and up four flights of stairs and into a narrow hallway painted green with arabesques over the doorways. A computer screen displayed something in Arabic script. Martin spoke French to the lady, who led us across the hall, through a doorway and down another hall to a family room with five beds, a kitchenette, and the only fully functional bathroom we had or would encounter in our travels. Out the balcony we could see the Duomo and red tiled roofs. All right then!

We had a luxurious, endless dinner with truffle ravioli (the best meal I had on this trip, and possibly ever), gnocci, and a divine lemon sorbet. As we ate and chatted the conversation waxed hilarious (no wine in sight, though) and a couple of Indian dudes were drawn like flies to honey, offering us, on seven separate occasions (we counted) a bouquet of roses or possible one or two of them, or one or two for each lady, or possibly some other combination, why not?

The Duomo (where we met one of the rose sellers again) is a fantastic confection of a building, enormous in its impact. White, green and pink marble in smooth or ornately carved sections, and the famous brick dome, a marvel of contemporary engineering, that rises over a wooden interior dome.