Firenze: Day 2

Stupido! That was the waiter's response at dinner when I asked him to take a picture with the girls...but I'm ahead of myself...We slept in today. Not on purpose, but it was needed to catch up to our surroundings. We ventured into the city to eat, shop and explore. We started by parading over to the San Lorenzo area to do what the locals do best...eat and people watch. We picked a random trattoria and all picked something different off the menu - omelette, pizza and prosciutto with melon. It was quite a feast. We then wandered over to the main market and capped off the mid afternoon with a visit to the piazza del Mercato Centrale. We drank an excellent cappuccino at one of the bars and then traversed the city for our 3:15pm reservation at the Accademia gallery. Reserving a spot to get into the museum was the smartest thing to do because the line was 2 hours long. Once inside, there are a series of rooms with different art and sculptures. The main attraction was Michelango's sculpture of "David". It made Linda cry. It made all of us stare at it for an half an hour. Words cannot describe what we witnessed, but were all in agreement that it is one of the most beautiful things that we have ever seen. It was so life-like that I was ready for it to take a breath after all the attention it was getting. We left in search of wine and food and shopped along the way to the same wine bar that we went to yesterday called Rose's. After that we went to I Fratellini, a hole-in-the-wall vinaii that serves customers in the street. We chatted with the server who recommended a place for dinner. He even called ahead for a reservation. We ate at a local traditional Tuscan restaurant which served us spaghetti with bolognese sauce, scallopine and lemoncella. The server was poking fun at me all evening which led to the phrase "stupido" when waiting for our bill. The thing that stikes me about this town is not the food, architecture and customs...it is the people. They are warm, friendly and full of life. We can't wait for our next adventure tomorrow where we tackle Siena and Greve.