Blog 204  I talked about my first Micam shoe show trip.  In this blog I want to talk about Florence Italy and Factory tours.

So, the Private label team, Aaron and I take a train to Florence Italy the next day. It was a nice scenic trip along the Italian countryside. We get to the train station and our hotel had a van pick us up to take us to the hotel. The hotel was down the street from the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge along the Arno River. We had dinner planned later with our agent, so the afternoon was open for sightseeing.

Aaron and I decided to walk over the famous bridge and see what it was all about. It had shops on the bridge itself which made it unique. In the old days there were butchers and other merchants on the bridge but in 1595 a decree was made to only have goldsmiths and jewelers on the bridge. This was big because butchers monopolized the shops on the bridge for a hundred years. The decree is still intact today.

As we were walking over the bridge, we tried our hand at Italian. Aaron had his book, and I had my device. We had a lot of fun doing this and learning at the same time. “Go over to that girl and say “Ho molte malattie” I knew he was up to no good but did it anyways. She blushed and giggled a little. “What did I just tell her?” I asked. You told her you have many diseases Aaron laughed. It was a good joke on me, we laughed about that throughout the day and even more so over drinks.

Me met up with our agent and had a fabulous dinner in Florence. It was a family-owned restaurant, and the food was amazing. I had this wild boar bolognaise and it was incredible. The owner came to the table and started us off with a complimentary drink and introduced us to his family. After dinner we had a shot of grappa that was tradition.

The agent suggested we go to a gelato place in town. It was the best frozen treat I ever had. Creamy ice cream in amazing flavors. This would be a thing for us every night we were in Florence. We walked around the town a little and looked at the shops which most of them were closed at this hour. Aaron wanted to buy a pair of red pants, so we were taking notes on what stores had the best ones.

In the Morning we woke up early to start our day. Our first tour was a little later so Aaron and I decided to check out the museum Galleria dell’Accademia which was home to the Statue of David. Michelangelo was the sculptor who created this masterpiece so we thought it would be interesting to see.

It took him over two years to finish and it was flawless. I stood in awe of the statue and decided to take a picture even though you weren’t supposed to. A guard rushed over and wanted to confiscate my camera, I told them I wouldn’t give them the camera  but would delete the picture. I secretly kept the best one. There were other famous works of art which were also interesting to see, including some of his earlier work.

We left the museum to get breakfast and a cappuccino. You didn’t see any Starbucks like in the USA, but the coffee was so good it didn’t matter. We would be touring several factories today, so we were looking forward to seeing the process.