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| Florence |
The next day was another good one. In the morning we hopped back
into the van and headed back to town. We had a quick breakfast of fruit
and some tea.
Once on our way I remember we stopped at a park that
overlooked Florence and had a fantastic panoramic view of the whole
city. After entering the old city we parked the van in the
Piazza del Duomo near the Duomo di Firenze (Basilica of Saint Mary of the Flower), and went our separate ways for the day.
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| Woman Playing Cello |
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| Laundry |
I once again did the backstreet thing (walking) and ended up sitting on
some steps along the river listening to the echoes of someone practicing
on a cello while I watched some women hang laundry from window to
window and other people coming and going about their daily lives. I do
not know why this memory was so vivid unless it had to do with the blue
sky, wispy white clouds, and warm summer breeze combined with the near
perfect strains of the cello. I say near perfect because the woman
played some phrases over and over again, until she was satisfied. My
uneducated ears were more than satisfied with the first playing, but
somehow you could tell when it reached her expectations. I left this
scene when the woman came out of an apartment carrying her cello, and
hopped on a bus.
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| David |
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| Perseus with the Head of Medusa |
After some more walking I ended up back in the
Piazza
and
looked around the area. Everything I wanted to see was in within
walking distance. First, there was the Cathedral. I managed to blend
in with an English speaking tour and gained an appreciation of what I
was looking at. This lasted about 45 minutes. After that I walked down
the street about three blocks to the Galleria dell"Accademia to see
Michelangelo's David. The David is awe inspiring, 17 feet tall and to
my eyes, perfect. Also found there are his four unfinished statues
called "The Slaves". This museum cost money now and has long waiting
lines. In 1970, the there was no cost and you could go in and take
your time and walk around them and take a good look. The only problem
then was trying not to step on the art students sitting on the floor
sketching the statues trying to gain some insight. In the opposite direction from the Duomo, about four blocks away is the
Loggia dei Lanzi. The Loggia is an open air museum that is still free
and open 24 hours a day. It contains many statues by famous artist
mostly from Florence. My favorite is by Benvenuto Cellini titled
"Perseus with the Head of Medusa". This was a 18 foot bronze casting,
completed by doing the entire cast at once, unheard of at the time that
he made it. I had read "The autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini" the
previous year and was amazed with his description of the processes he
used for making this piece of art. Actually his whole book was a very
interesting read!
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| Couple, Hitchhiking |
It was still
early afternoon when we all met back at the parked van and headed back
to our campsite in the farmers field. Campfires were started and people
started walking from site to site checking for rides in all directions
and the possibility of new traveling companions of the opposite sex
heading the same direction. As I stated in a previous post, this was
not a sexual thing. A girl was hassled less if she was traveling with a
male and a guy got rides quicker while traveling with a girl.
I
found an old tab of acid {LSD} in the bottom of my backpack and split it with
three of the people in my group. This cut the strength down and we
ended up with an incredible hashish like high, complete with the
munchies and giggles. How did we handle it, you ask? There was a
pizzeria down the road a couple of miles. One of the girls that did not
share the tab, drove us to the pizzeria and we ordered individual
pizzas with an ungodly quantity and assortment of toppings. Even the
anchovies tasted good!
Note to my grandchildren: Yes, I did take some drugs in the 70's
and mention taking some in this post. I do not believe in skipping
over that fact that I took some and will not lie about it. No, I do not condone drug
use. It is an individual's choice and I have seen a number of people messed up from drugs.
I was one of the lucky ones who was not messed up, at least I do not
think I was messed up. The 70's were easy, but now in this century, there are a multitude of many more
dangerous types and combinations you should avoid. And now, enough said, and back to the post.
After
devouring the pizza, a problem developed. The girl drove us back up to
the field but the the farmer or "someone else" had decided that the
field was full enough and no one else could enter! We could not
persuade him that we already had a campsite inside the property with
some of our equipment still there. As luck would have it, we found a
break in the fence up the road a'ways and around a curve that was out
of sight of the gate. We were all laughing (we still had a good case
of the giggles) as we immediately drove into the field and headed back
to our campsite. As we swerved around a small stand of trees, we came
to a quick stop. In front of us stood a tall slender man with his eyes closed, playing
a violin and dancing. He had a long van dyke style beard and ponytail
that was almost down past his shoulder blades. He seemed to be a very
good violinist and a passable dancer, but what did we know about the
subject. We were distracted by him being completely nude!
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| Nude Violinist |
Things
calmed down after that. Gilbert Murphy entertained us with some more
Elvis Presley tunes interspersed with some folk songs. I seem to
remember him singing about some children playing between some tenements
and their mother's tossing some sandwiches down to them from the
windows. We spent the rest of the evening talking and reading. Gilbert
wrote two poems in my journal. I shared them in my last post. One of
the girls was entertaining us by reading aloud my copy of "Europe on
Five Dollars a Day". We were doing Europe with much less money and having a
blast! All of a sudden, she stopped and looked up at us and shouted
"There is a coin operated Laundromat in Venice!" Guess where our group
headed the next day!
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