Florence Italy

After a week of running all over the city, I was really looking forward to spending a quiet Sunday reading in my apartment.

Alas, this did not happen.

By Florentine standards, my street is really quiet because it’s a pedestrian zone. My street is bordered by the Ponte Vecchio at one end, and the Arno River on the other. My neighbors with designated parking spaces are the only people who are allowed to drive down my street. Everyone else has to move around the neighborhood on foot or on bike. This is strictly enforced by the traffic cops who stand in front of my apartment building day and night and literally stop each and every car and scooter to check permits. Generally, it’s fantastically peaceful.

This morning, however, I was awakened at 9am by a horrible racket. For the past week, I’ve loved waking up to my view of the Ponte Delle Grazie. It’s my little mid-century modern visual snack in the middle of all the ancient architecture. Today, my serene view was interrupted by an enormous military parade crossing the bridge. Along with all the marching, and organized shouting associated with military events, there were no fewer than three brass bands involved, all playing different, official sounding tuba music. It went on forever.

When the parade finally ended, I was just settling down to read a book, when I heard police sirens approaching. I ran out to my balcony to see no fewer than ten police cars go speeding by on the street below. At first I thought that they were on the way to some major crime scene, because I’d never seen so many italian police cars at one time. Then I noticed that there were some regular cars speeding along with the police vehicles. So my next guess was that I was watching some sort of diplomatic motorcade. I had that thought at approximately the same moment that I saw the blonde woman with big boobs and a sash, hanging out of the sun roof of her car, waving at the people on the street like some pageant winner, or low-rent royalty. Jesus. Is this another parade? What is going on?

Can a cycling enthusiast out there please tell me what bike race was happening today? Because there was no mention of it in any of the local papers, or on the interwebs.

After the excitement of the bike race, I lay down for an afternoon nap (to make up for my lost sleep due to the military parade). I was just drifting off, when some jackhole started blasting his accordian music. It was so loud that it sounded like the accordian player was inside my apartment. I lay there on my bed, waiting for someone else, with better Italian language skills, to tell whichever from-hell neighbor to turn his personal Oktoberfest soundtrack off, or maybe for the traffic cops downstairs to make an arrest, because bad accordian music has to be in violation of some sort of italian law. But strangely, these things didn’t happen. If anything, the music just got louder. So I went back out on the balcony to see if I could pinpoint the noisy culprit.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Oh, Italy.