Day 15: Today we decided to walk around the giant street and fruit market. We hit the fruit first. There were skinned, dead rabbits and $1000 bottles of 100 year old balsamic vinegar. We bought some fruit and fresh pasta and headed out to the street. I got a couple of aprons for the girls with their names embroidered on them and Justin had the genius idea to let Henry buy a wallet so he could keep money in there, work for his money so he could buy some things he keeps asking us for but we never buy for him. I have to say that Henry cried A LOT on this trip, but the whole idea of working for money so he could buy whatever he wanted was the best thing that happened to all of us. Then, we found an adorable man painting on the street. He was from Iran and had the most delicate and lovely paintings. He was so nice to the kids and even made them a couple of free paintings. We bought some Pinocchio paintings from him. He saved the cherries the kids gave to him because he was fasting for some Muslim holiday. He was such a good person and so happy. Then we went home and forced all the kids to go down for naps since we had decided to let the kids stay up late to see how fun it was at night in Florence and take them to see the Charlie Chaplin show. I told them how fun it was and that we would buy them a really cool glowing flying apparatus if they took a nap. They easily fell asleep. After dinner we took them outside and let them run around the piazza. I met some people from Pescara who were really lovely and they were loving the kids and the blond hair. We almost lost Clementine again who was pushing Vivi around the place, but found them after 15 seconds of searching. As soon as the sky turned to dusk, the vendors on the street began to shoot off the glowing, flying thingies. You basically push a button to light up a small but very bright LED light, shoot it up in the air with a rubber band and it floats down to the ground in a delicate spin. They are really fun, but get bent out of shape very easily. The kids had a blast shooting them up and trying to catch them. Then we wandered down the street to another piazza where we listened to an incredible violin, base and accordion trio(the base player was the same guy we met before), got heckled by an Asian lady selling scarves, let the kids ride the merry-go-round and then finally sat down to watch the entire Charlie Chaplin show. He had Bea come help him out at the beginning with his balloon trick and then had Henry come out for almost the entire duration of the show. He had Henry, another Brittish guy that had his shirt off and a Korean girl and he was making them do hilarious things without saying a word, but trying to show them what to do with whistles and strange movements. It was so great. At one point he asked Henry to pop the balloon and he didn't want to, but he did it anyway and was so sad that he started crying and ran back to us on the side. They guy ended up giving him the 10 Euro that we already put in his hat which made him really happy and so he had no problem staying until the end. He was such a good little performer and did everything the guys told him to do. What a fun experience. The only bad part is that our camera took such horrible shots even though I put it on night mode. I couldn't get it to flash correctly and then it ran out of batteries for the very last photo op that was to die for. I am still mad about that! Anyway, it was a truly magical night and Henry was the star of the show!
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