Piazza Della Signoria: Tuesday, 3:00 PM

h, so that's jet lag! I checked into the hotel around 1:00 yesterday afternoon, had a shower, wolfed down a quick panini and a couple of Peronis in the hotel bar, and then went out for a walk.

My initial impressions of the Florentine streets were coloured by the ugly fact that, sometime during my hotel wanderings, I'd lost 150,000 lire (about $135 Cdn.). I'd placed all my money in my fanny pack and I suppose it must have fallen when I was pulling out my keys or some other bills. When a frenzied search of the hotel proved fruitless, the combination of dog-tiredness and my penniless-in-a-strange-city-on-the-other-side-of-the-planet situation served to dye my mood a deep black. So, as I hunted desperately for a bank machine, the oppressive crowds around the Duomo were none too pleasant.

However, once I'd found a bank machine and coerced it into giving me cash (always a real pick-me-up), the sheer splendour of the Duomo—it is truly a spectacular sight; here's a picture of the facade and another of the dome itself—lifted my spirits considerably. So, without much of a plan, I just started wandering the streets of Florence, drinking it all in.

I arrived back at my hotel, truly exhausted by now, around 5:00. My plan was to stay up until 8:00 and then crash big-time. I cracked open a Kronenbourg from the mini-bar, read a little, watched some CNN, and generally just tried to waste some time. I made it to about 7:00 and then I just couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. I slept fitfully for what seemed like forever. However, when I awoke I was surprised to see that it was only 1:00 in the morning. I was wide awake, though, so I turned on the light, popped open another beer, and settled in to a CNN/Sky News session. I won't bother recording the black, why-the-fuck-am-I-here thoughts that plagued me over the next couple of hours. They were, I see in hindsight, a product of the jet lag.

Finally, around 3:30, I felt tired once again and tried for more sleep. Oh, I slept alright. Although my slumber was again fitful, when I finally surfaced I couldn't believe that I'd slept until noon. This meant I'd been unconscious for about 14 and a half of the last 17 hours!

Now, starved and thirsty, I've just had lunch at a trattoria in the Piazza Della Signoria, Florence's largest and most famous piazza (square). From my outdoor seat (see the picture below), I can watch the world go by and ponder both Ammanti's Neptune (the Neptune fountain; it's the white statue on the left) and Giambologna's statue of Cosimo Medici (the one on the right). (Florentines, apparently, call the Neptune statue—which must be 25 feet tall—The Big White One. Legend has it that when the light of the full moon strikes the big guy, he moves around the piazza and talks to the other statues.) I'm well-rested and well-fed, so I think it's safe to pronounce the jet lag over and done with. Now to explore...

Florentine Notebook	On the Train	In the Uffizi

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