Fiesole

Yesterday was the festival of San Giovanni, the patron saint of Florence. At 10pm they had fireworks which lasted for a half an hour. Americans do fireworks for a shorter period of time but with more at the same time. They had the fireworks shooting off from two points right next to each other, and it was mostly a series of "look at this firework! now please enjoy this firework! here is another!" i went with the older host daughter, Costy, and four of her friends. After the fireworks we met up with the younger, Ele, and one of her friends and we all went to get gelato. Ele's friend had bought this little toy that sends a disc flying through the air and Ele managed to launch it and get it stuck on a rooftop. They were trying to knock it down with cans, every single one of which proceeded to get stuck on the same ledge, and then an umbrella got involved. Finally a tall guy came to our rescue, and Ele sat on his shoulders and grabbed it with the point of the umbrella. The whole thing was absolutely hysterical.

Before all that i did some shopping. It's all kinds of hot here and I only brought one skirt, so I wound up buying two really cute linen ones that I love. I also got a silk shawl that came in handy today. The rest of my purchases were gifts, so you'll have to wait till later to find out what they were. I also discovered that fruit-flavored gelato has no lactose in it, so I've wasted three weeks of being in Italy and not eating Gelato.

Today I took the bus to Fiesole, a little town on a hill overlooking Florence. It was totally insanely gorgeous but there were a lot of very steep hills. The town has ruins of a roman bath and a ton of artifacts from an old etruscan graveyard, so there was tons to see. I met a guy named Giuseppe who spoke such perfect British English that i was really shocked to find out that he was Italian. The view of Florence was really great, this city looks a lot bigger from outside than from within. I think I may be a little burned but not tooo badly, I did use my fabulous 14 euro sunscreen.

My hour is almost up. Hope you are all doing well!