September 20 Florence

First day in Florence
Got to hotel shortly after noon. The flights weren't too bad but that half an ambien helped me doze on the airplane while listening to a biography of Dante.
I met other bikers at the hotel but all doing a different rides and staying longer in Florence.
 Started exploring at 3:00 pm. Statues everywhere!  Cobblestone,brickwork, pavement, and rocks on all surfaces. No grass lawns, all flowers are in planters.
Fabulous cathedrals, museums, bridges, opera halls. Creamy stucco apartment houses hover over a muddy river.

After getting my bearings along the river, I wandered through the city and find myself amid Michaelangelo's statues. There is David, bigger than life! Thinking I was heading home, I crossed the piazza, rounded a cathedral and find myself returning to "David." He, and the other naked men, lions, babies, and women in shawls, must be reproductions. There are too many pigeons on them. Street venders sell postcards of close-ups of statuary genitals.

So, I made my way to Dante's house. He was born in 1365 to an established family. he wrote philosophy, poetry, and plays.  He became a doctor but he was at odds with the, then pope,  and there was a death sentence declared so, for the rest of his life, Dante avoided his fatwa by staying away from his home in Florence.
After I asked for directions to the river, I find I have walked a long way from the circle on my map that signifies my hotel (I forget it's name), my feet hurt, the sun is setting, and I am hungry.
Back down river--leather shops, shoe stores, gelatin shops, beautiful people, and a multitude of languages spoken.
The Galileo science museum.  I can't believe I'm in the place so many of the Italian Renaissance heroes lived and created, a century before Shakespeare, and I only have a day!
A block from my hotel, in familiar territory, I collapsed at an outdoor cafe and ordered a pizza margherita and a glass of wine. I sat next to a Russian couple with a 6 year old girl, from Mumbai. I chat with Australian tourists until after dark.