World Adventure

29 Sep 12 Florence
What to do today.
Domestic duties. We head off to a local laundry with our clothes walking next to us. They are as relieved as we are to get a wash. An old couple turned up and we noticed the accent sounded Australian. Vanessa kept our cover for a while but after some prompting I decided to say hello and found out that they had just returned from Cinque Terra where we are scheduled to go in a few days time..We were soon to discover that there had been a rockslide on the hiking path and that four Australian women had  been injured and  that two had serious injuries.The area is now only accessible by helicopter so I guess that whilst we are still planning to walking in  the area we will revise our path.
I ask the hotel manager whether there were any festivals within 50km of Florence (including Florence). He does not know but has a look at the internet and tells me no. Vanessa and I spend the day wandering around Florence exploring and people watching. I would like to have another look at the Uffizi gallery and have been monitoring the queues all day. They have been fairly full all day but I was hoping that they would drop off late afternoon. Having learnt our lesson last time we visted this gallery we leave  both  cameras and our  bags in the room and headed back to the centre of the old city of Florence. Pointed a couple of lost Asians back towards the Duomo on the way.
Drums? Did we just hear drums? Yes. We followed the sound. Medieval dress? We stumble upon a parade of medieval dressed people , a large cart pulled by a pair of white Chianina oxen, that  is carrying  more a thousand of wine bottles  from the Florentine countryside. The cart has label "Chianti Rufina" written on it. The procession was heading towards the Duomo. Turns out it is a blessing of the first wine of the year from the Rufina region. Doh. No camera and no time to head back to the hotel. The flag bearers twirl their flags and the drums beat on. The procession stops at the  Duomo for the blessing then heads off again towards the town hall. We look at the queue length at the Ufizzi gallery - too long still - so continue following along. We grab a spot up near the slaying of medusa statue with great views and watch the parade. Plenty of ceremony and the flag tossing was memorable as the wind started to pick. All in all quite worthwhile.  I even brought a bottle of locally produced Chianti that was been distributed from a cart but I was later to learn that this was probably a mistake as it is not quite so light and fluffy as lambrusco.
Nothing on? We did a little research and found that it was European heritage weekend. All the state museums in Florence are free.

On the recommendation of the hotel staff we ordered pizza from a little pizzeria a few blocks away .The pizza was absolutely nothing to get excited about so we are thinking of not going to the restaurant that they have recommended.