May 11, Thursday.

Monica and Simona picked me up at my hotel La Villeta, modest but nice little thing that it is, and took me into Firenze (Florence).

Before talking about that, I realized I forgot to mention something from when I first checked into the hotel. I took a nice walk around the hotel into a very nice little park where it seemed thousands of birds were chirping. The park was quite active, with lots of people walking, jogging, couples kissing and hugging—very Italy. At a pond, I saw two turtles making love on a log. Not an easy feat, I would imagine. Then I walked around for 15 or 20 more minutes, came back to that place, and they were still going at it. I guess turtles do everything slowly (for animals).

Anyway, back to Florence, which is one of the world’s great cities. I love Florence. Hadn’t been here since about 1988. Walk around any corner and the senses are greeted with another amazing architectural feat, or beautiful sculpture, or beautiful square. In fact, in one square is a whole section of beautiful sculptures. The greatest sculptor of them all of course is Michelangelo.

The highlight for me was going in to see the real, original statue of David. There are many others around, but nothing equals the real thing. It was worth the one hour long wait in a queue. Almost as impressive as the statue of David is the hallway leading up to that statue, where Michelangelo-carved sculptures look like they are crawling right out of the rocks. I don’t know if these were half finished or whether he wanted them to be this way, but you could see that Michelangelo saw these beautiful forms with in the rocks, and then his job was to get rid of all the rock that is in the way. Just like our minds. All we have to do is get the extraneous rock out of the way and what is left is the pure beautiful essence of ourselves.

In the statue of David itself could be the world’s greatest sculpture. Everything about it is perfect. There is such a feeling of serene power within that sculpture perfect. The perfect male human form, either about to take down Goliath with a rock, or having just done it. I could look at that sculpture all day.

Anyway, for lunch we stopped in a tiny the lunch takeout place to get incredible Panini’s– forget gluten, I’m in Italy now– and then we had a pizza for dinner. Wonderful day. Great company, too.