in the hills of tuscany
June 11, 2019
fourth-post – florence
click to read all the italy – 2019 posts
On the drive from Orvieto to Florence, the car GPS took us into the Tuscan hills. And we loved it. Seane saw a peacock and Connie insisted we stop; I saw a field of poppies and I insisted we stop; Christian deciding that he needed to climb the wall surrounding a derelict villa, turned off the car and made for the wall. The care abandoned, the destination forgotten, we just played.
We realized the GPS took us to an area north-east of the city – Fiesole – and once we corrected for the mistake, we were back on the road towards the city of The Medici.
Coming into Florence at 4:00 in the afternoon, on a hot day should be forbidden. The place was crawling with tourists indiscriminately walking and locals rushing to get home. It was not a pretty site or an easy situation.
After negotiating the technology to get into our Airbnb, rush-hour traffic to find a parking garage and luggage lugging up 3 landings, we headed to Piazza della Signoria. (Seane is the navigator, and she’s excellent at it; I can co-pilot – read the Italian street signs, point to where we need to go and explain what we’re seeing – what I can’t deal with are directions and figuring out how from point A to point B. My mantra is, “We need to go this location; get me there and I’ll take care of the rest.”)
We get to the Piazza and it’s set up for Salvatore Ferragamo men’s wear presentation. The entire area in front of the Loggia and the Palazzo Vecchio is sectioned off and guarded my a small army of men in black – security squeezed into skinny-fits jackets and pants.
“No fashion show has ever been allowed in Piazza della Signoria before,” . . . It was also the first show with the designer – Paul Andrews – in the role of creative director of both the men’s and women’s lines, and the first time that Ferragamo staged a fashion show in its hometown of Florence.
The label contributed to the recently completed restoration of the majestic Fountain of Neptune, which dominates Piazza della Signoria. 1