Sometimes you just have to put yourself out there

We didn't have much planned today but it turned out to be a real winner. Tammi and I hit the market here at Santo Spirito where there were mostly household items and kid clothes. It amazes us that it can be so different from one day to the next. There's a little store at the far end of the piazza that sells grains and dried pastas and the proprietor is a man named Giovanne. Every morning as we leave the piazza we stick our heads into his shop to say hi, and every time we leave his store we wonder what the heck he just said. Giovanne speaks in what was explained to us as a dialect of a dialect of a dialect of Florence. I mean, a guy like Giovanne can really make you feel like all the money you've spent on Italian lessons was a huge waste of time. He's the nicest guy though, so we tell ourselves it's a real test of our skills. This morning, after a lot of nodding and hand gestures we were pretty sure we understood him to invite us to see his canoeing club down by the Ponte Vecchio where he'd be around 2:00. We were to ring a bell at the green door and say we were looking for Giovanne. Wow, we were either on to something really special or we were about to be sold into a prostitution ring. We decided to just go for it because it might be something most people just don't get to see. Turns out the canoeing club is a private beach club down on the river, just below the bridge, where members row in beautiful canoes and outriggers. There's a lovely grass beach, a restaurant and workout room, an indoor pool for rowing practice and a great card room where the club trophies are kept. Giovanne walked us literally under the Ponte Vecchio, pointing out cracks in the structure, while explaining that the old tunnel that houses all this stuff was actually used by the Medici horse guard to get access to the river from the Uffizzi palace above. At least that's what we think he said. Very cool, and very nice of Giovanne to ask us to join him.

We walked from there back to our side of the river and had lunch at a little spot we've been wanting to try, the Quattro Leone, where we were treated to a glass of prosecco before a delicious lunch of arugula salad, pasta and fresh white beans. And a half liter of house white wine. We struck up a conversation in Italian with the Albanian waiter and then wandered our way towards home so we could go for a nice long walk and burn off some of these calories. As we walked through our piazza Miguel, the proprietor of one of the restaurants here, stopped us and offered a glass of prosecco, on the house. A side note here...when you ask for the check in Italian you say "il conto per favore". We met Miguel when Tammi was on the way to the bathroom and rather hurriedly asked him for the check, but she said instead " il canto per favore", which means "the song please". Miguel broke out in a lovely aria, much to Tam's embarrassment. Anyway, Miguel, like Giovanne, is a true gentleman and conversed with us over our second free prosecco of the afternoon. We left there an hour later. Seven miles wasn't enough to burn off the afternoon's damage but it helped. After we got cleaned up we went back down to the piazza where our "guys" were happy to see us again and encouraged us to come down tomorrow for more conversation. They really are harmless and who knows what other doors that might open. Like we said, sometimes you just have to put yourself out there.