feldmanlarry

This is the second entry for this day. The first one dealt with 9 AM to 4 PM and this one is for 4 PM to 3 AM the next day.

Chiara, our guide, invited the two of us who were on the tour to go to a wine tasting before for the afternoon tour of the Accademia. This turned out to be the first of too much alcoholic consumption. The owners were promoting their export business and unfortunately they had someone like me who knows nothing about wine. They all pretty much tasted like wine. I could tell some difference but not that much.

It was a really good time. The couple of the right were on their honeymoon. They struck me as possibly typical young, outgoing, fun-loving Floridians (whatever that means). I made a comment to Chiara (the blond standing up) that Americans can be obnoxious and she totally disagreed. She felt Americans were usually a lot of fun and easy to get along with.

Besides the honeymoon couple, there were Chiara, Nicole and Neta, who by the end of this night I would call friends.

Chiara invited Neta and me to join her friends and co-workers for dinner, which is really an unusual and wonderful thing to do. It’s worth the time to talk about these six people. I put the languages they spoke after each person. This would make an excellent Venn Diagram)

1. Chiara is an amazing force and free spirit. She’s an excellent tour guide, involved with fashion, and a potential pop star (check out one of her videos at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHEStL3ozG0). She’s the kind of person who just gets people involved. During the long evening, it was clear that people naturally gravitate towards her. There is so much she can do with her life. (French, Italian, English)

2. The person on the far left of the picture below is Nicole. She’s a sultry French woman who reminds me of Edith Piaf. You sense there’s a great deal of mystery behind her. She was the only one who didn’t speak English but that gave me a chance to speak French with her. Chiara told me Nicole is her best friend. Nicole was the one who egged us on to go clubbing and hearded everyone together. Another fascinating person. (French, Italian)

3. I became good friends with Neta, the person in the corner next to me. She’s an Israeli who is also traveling alone. She spend years in India and was often considered to be a native when she was wearing local clothes in India. Her parents are Jews who left Yemen and Bulgaria so she’s called Sephardic. My father was the other type, an Ashkenazi Jew, since his parents were from Romania and spoke Yiddish. She had just quit her job as an art therapist in a women’s shelter. She was in Florence to see the originals of art that some of her children had tried to copy. (Hebrew, English)

4. The guy next to Chiara with the sunglasses on his head is David. He’s the boss of the Florence travel agency, Italywithus.com, which worked amazingly well for me and Neta and everyone else we came in contact with. I’d highly recommend using them if you’re in Italy. Every time I spoke with David, he mentioned another place he had lived or another part of his background. He had lived in Florida, Ireland, Italy, and several other places I’ve forgotten. He clearly was a very competent boss and as it turned out a very fun guy to party with. (English, Italian, ???)

5. I didn’t get to know the guy next to David wearing a vest. His name is Lorenzo (my name in Italian) and is working on his dissertation on the history of the mafia. He is teaching an online course for the U. of New Haven. I would have loved to have spent some time talking about the mafia with him but he left after dinner. (Italian, English)

6. Geet is the guy in the right corner of the picture. He’s from Sri Lanka and was the person who convinced us to join their tour of the Uffizi Museum that morning. He had a gentle way about him while speaking passionately about the tours. He convinced me and I didn’t regret it. He’s another fun-loving person filled with stories about his life. (English, Italian)

For desert, I had a Florence specialty of biscotti dipped in an almond liqueur. Chiara explained how to eat it with what turned out (I think unintentionally) to be a slightly obscene gesture. Or maybe it’s the obscene gesture turned upside down.

After dinner, we went to a folk club. We were no longer in tourist land. There were some international people there who were living in Florence mixed in with the Italians. The music was not really my style, until this woman came up and sang Aretha’s “Chain of Fools” while holding her baby.

We left the folk club around 12:30 AM and Nicole got us all to go to a jazz club, called The Jazz Club. We had to pay 6 euros ($6.50) to join the club but it included a free drink. It was well worth it. There were several musicians jamming together at first. One was playing an instrument I had never seen before called a handspan or hang drum. I got to speak a little Russian with the guy who played it who was from Moscow. It’s a Swiss instrument but based on the steel drum.

Two vocalists came on later who were amazing. They sang scat or bebop. The guy was obviously heavily influenced by Billy Preston. “You keep on using me until you use me up.” My group of six started dancing. I haven’t danced that much in years. I sat down after a while and there of my friends were dancing with their arms around each other and had a massive fall. It was scary at first but when everyone seemed to be OK it was a highlight of the night.

We closed the bar at 2:30. I had wine tasting of small amounts of 6 or so wines, prosecco (like champagne) and two glasses of wine at the restaurant, the almond liqueur at the restaurant, and a beer at each of the clubs. This was more alcohol than I was used to drinking in a month or so.

The experience of the six of us walking through Florence was greatly enhanced by the beautiful buildings and statues everywhere. Where else can you see something like this on your way home at 3 AM?

This last one is a copy of the real David.

Here’s a picture of the three women and of our whole group.

I couldn’t handle the Turkish food that the local ones in our group went for. I need to crash. The trip had been greatly enriched (along with my liver) by partying with these people.