Off to Florence

Pretty much as soon as I'm done typing this I'm heading off to Florence
for a week or two. Rome has been mindblowingly fantastic; this weekend
was really amazing. A few highlights:

If a police cruiser slows down to drive past you it isn't necessarily to
throw you off the pitch - sometimes they just want to listen to the music.

An able-bodied beggar holding a sign "cerco donna ricca" (I'm looking for
a rich woman).

A gentleman paid for a CD with a folded bill that I just stuffed into my
pocket. Bills are color-coded here, with fives being blue, tens red, and
twenties green. I saw red and that was all I needed. Turns out it was
the other red bill - the 50. I just hope he doesn't think I deliberately
cheated him.

Two three-piece busker bands (both with upright basses and guitarists, one
with an accordian and the other with a saxaphonist) have been
semi-competeing for the past two weeks. With basses they need to be at
least three blocks apart or they really interfere with each other, so they
either really space themselves apart or they trade off going at half hour
intervals. Yesterday they united to form a huge pickup band, which was
really cool to see and sounded incredible.

I hope this finds everybody doing well, I'm off to Florence! The weather
forecast this week is actually calling for snow, but it's supposed to warm
up for the weekend (knock on wood). Ciao!