Chaos on the street...but the music plays on

After a long overnight train ride across France and Italy in a car with a beautiful and comedic family from Pisa.
After three days of roaming Rome (pun intended sorry) seeing coliseums and pillars, white statues, eating incredible hot crispy pizza covered in exotic toppings, making friends in a youth hostel, drinking great coffee every time a bathroom break was necessary, walking the Spanish steps, watching nuns scurry across the streets and within the Vatican, waiting two hours in the cold and rain to be elbowed in an irate Italian stampede to meet closed doors that would have lead into the Sistine Chapel, after the best hot chocolate, throwing wishes on coins in fountains, observing caricatures, and a meridian line, another train ride, a leaning tower, a hidden keith haring mural, a Japanese wedding, another train ride, after that, then, they arrived in Florence in time for New Years.


At eleven o’clock on the 31st they left their run-down old one room hostel and took to the streets, passing by the train station, beautiful blackened churches, reaching the town square in time to see the orchestra start to play. Beethoven’s organized structured and majestic strings and woodwinds perfectly juxtaposed against the small explosives that rocked the cobblestone streets of the city – echoing every twenty seconds from a different alleyway.

At ten minutes to midnight they left the music to go to the river where they watched fireworks and their reflections in smoky skies. Three two one – champagne bottles popped on cue, glass was smashed, people shouted and kissed and wished strangers a Buon anno.