Welcome to Firenze

Welcome to Florence. Touristas are not allowed in the church until 3pm. The charge is 5000 lire. The crypt costs 2500 lire to see. It will be 10000 lire to climb to the dome. Watch your head, the arches are low. You cannot sit here. Could you be so kind as to move? We are taking photographs of the monument.

I've had to come to grips with the fact that Florence is not the Italy I fell in love with years ago. This is not the city of a hunk of cheese and a bottle of wine along the river sitting on hunks of a Roman column. But Florence is the city of ART. It is the city of sitting in the Ristorante lingering over a bottle of chianti. Holiness is not what it was in Rome. Relics of the saints are on display in the Museum. The number of the tourists overwhelms the ones who come into the church to pray. It's not the city of pilgrims, or it is for a different kind of pilgrim. There is a library where Michelangelo designed a staircase, which has a quiet holiness which draws Italians and tourists alike just to sit and look at it.