Spent time walking around the market trying to find fruit
but it was the half-way point of the month and that means Italians take a
holiday so the fruit market was closed! So mad.
Henry threw epic tantrums all day long, we went to the most boring and
inaudible mystery story for kids at the Palazzo Vecchio in a room that was over
100 degrees and my kids kept getting into trouble for climbing all over
everything and touching things they weren’t supposed to touch, but if they
didn’t want kids touching those things maybe they shouldn’t have been in the
room in the first place. Then we
wandered around trying to find gelato and after dragging the kids around,
crying and whining for gelato we found possibly the best gelato we’ve ever had
at Caribe in Florence as well as the best granite flavor ever. The granita was called The Sicilian Soul and
it was a mix between giant lemon, clementine and some other citrus fruit. It was delicious. We also had yogurt flavor with cinnamon,
olive oil, hazelnut, banana, almond, truffle, and ricotta. All the flavors were so delicious and so
real, not like all the fake stuff around town.
We went to the Palazzo Vecchio to see where the Medici
family lived. The story of their family
is so insane. I can’t believe the wealth
and power they achieved in Italy. We
signed up for this Children’s class that was supposed to be a mystery story or
something, but it was in a tiny, extremely hot room with tiny broken stools for
seats and the cartoon they showed was in horrible English that wasn’t audible
to the kids and even the lady presenting the whole thing was hard to
understand. The room that was meant for
kids wasn’t even kid proof and the my kids were getting in trouble because they
were touching everything that they weren’t supposed to touching. Then we went upstairs to see the special room
where the family would go to reveal their most secret dealings. We had to leave after that because the kids
were so bored. We went home to prepare
an epic Italian feast and then we went back in the evening to see the rest of
the palace. Justin went first and when
he got back, Lucy and I went out. We
listened to an amazing classical guitar player and then went inside to see all
the thousands of frescoes all over the house from floor to ceiling. It was so strange, but every single painting
that had a woman in it was nude from the waist up. And it wasn’t just one here or there, the
rooms were filled with like 20 nude women each.
How could you live in a house that was just filled with paintings of
nude women? The palace was pretty spectacular and ornate. Lucy fell in love with a marble bust of a
super hot guy. She wondered if he
existed ever.
On our way home we encountered the man who played Charlie
Chaplin in the street show every night that attracts a giant crowd of hundreds
of people and we talked to
him for quite a while. We found out that
he is from Iran but he’s been here for a long time. He has one daughter who is in her 20s but
he’s only seen her once when she was 1 and once when she came to see him a few
years ago. He talked about the
girlfriends he had and was probably trying to hit on us, but all we talked to
him about was the church and how I had 4 kids.
We told him that we would bring our kids to his show the next night and
we headed home.
As we were about to walk down the street we saw a man selling lame jewelry with about 20 party hats on his head. He was from Bangladesh and had one lazy eye that was half closed. He looked strange so naturally I wanted to take a photo with him, so I asked him but he told me that for a photo I had to pay him 1 Euro. I told him I didn't have any money, which was true. I carried no money on this trip. Then, he softened up and said we could take a photo. Then, he said he wanted to give us bracelets so we paid him for the bracelets with Lucy's money, even though he kept on insisting that we were now friends therefore we didn't have to pay. I felt bad taking something from this desperate creature so we gave him the money and were about to head home when his buddy who was selling flowers came up to us and told us to meet them at the Fish Bar or something or other. I was 100 percent opposed, but Lucy turned to me and asked with a huge smile on her face, "should we go?" Here was my darling sister, just home from her mission hanging out with my boring family of screaming children when all she really wanted to do was go out clubbing in Europe. Against my better judgement I agreed to go with her and as I walked, I knew we wouldn't get home before 2am since it was already 12:30. My head hurt just thinking about the next morning. The guys told us their names, which we would never be able to remember so we just called our lazy eye friend Mongaloid because it sounds good with the word Bangladeshi. Luckily the place was very close and we went inside. BTW, I was wearing something that would also pass as pajamas with no make-up and my hair in a bun, so not looking so hot. As soon as we stepped inside I took a photo of Lucy with all the crazy dancing drunk people and then all these random guys kept coming up to her and wanting to get their photo taken with her. She was LOVING all the attention and the obsurdity of what we were doing. Then the owner came over and told us we were entitled to a free shot of whatever. We had to tell him about 5 times that we didn't drink and I finally told him we were Mormon. I took photos of Lucy behind the bar and dancing with all sorts of men. Instead of a shot we got a couple glasses of orange juice and drank to Lucy's first time in a bar, ever! There was a pretty good crowd there until we requested "pumped up kicks" which ruined people's disco techno party mood and they all left. After an hour we realized that our Bangladeshi friends had totally disappeared and we wondered where they were this whole time. We said our goodbyes to the DJ and the owner and left. As soon as we stepped outside all the guys hanging around the entrance were cat calling us and I turned to Lucy and yelled, "RUN!", so we ran as fast as we could away from that place until we heard someone calling after us. It was lazy eye. He and his friend were running after us and so we decided to say goodnight before we left for home. They followed us until the flower guy realized that I was married and left and then lazy eye asked me, "so, you husband?" I told him "yes, husband". Then he pointed to Lucy, and said, "she, husband?" Lucy gave me that wide eyeball look like she was going to kill me, but I still said, "no, she no husband" with a smile on my face. At this point Lucy was standing at the stoop of our apartment with Lazy Eye on the street and I felt as though I was watching a romantic comedy. He looked at her and said, "I(pause) like you". "You(pause) like me(inflection)?" Lucy was about buckle over with laughter and with tears almost streaming down her face, shook her head and slowly said, "nnnnooooooo". He said, "ok, friends?" and Lucy agreed, "friends" then as they were hugging, he grabbed her and started kissing her neck. This guy was smaller than Lucy so I wasn't that concerned and decided to take a couple photos to immortalize one of the funniest moments in my life before using my one very strong baby carrying arm to rip him off of Lucy, which took no effort at all since he was half the size of a normal human man and half my weight. As soon as we broke free we opened the door to our apartment building and ran all the way upstairs to bed. It was indeed 2am. Then, I couldn't even sleep because I was afraid he was going to seek revenge somehow, so I basically got about 3 hours of sleep that night. It was all worth it though, just to see Lucy's first kiss after the mission. Priceless.
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