"florence november 6 2002" a Florence Travel Page by EllenH

when we went to florence on saturday november 6 2002 we had no idea what we were in for. all i wanted to do was visit the san lorenzo market as i had 15 years earlier to see if it was the same. it was very much the same by the way. as the morning went on we started seeing hundreds of police and were just wondering what was going on. then we started seeing all kinds of young kids with dreadlocks and i said, hey thats cool havent seen much of that in italy. it was of course a massive peace demonstration before the war in iraq.

at first we were a little concerned being americans but it was still a very exciting atmosphere and we wanted to be part of it plus we werent exactly thrilled at the prospect of going to war. it became apparent that it was definately anti-bush but it was not anti american which is the way i feel about italy in general.

so in the end we were late getting to the bed and breakfast we were staying at in pontasieve and we felt we had to leave. waiting for our train, thousands of people got off the trains to join the protest, marching band style, the leader with a tuba. it was so great. as it turns out the b+b people were rude and we didnt like them at all and wished we had stayed in florence. instead we watched it on tv as 500,000 people marched along the arno river to a soccer stadium and watched a concert that sounded like an italian version of dave matthews....how i wish we would have been there. he had beautiful wine glasses and we had a bottle of 97 brunello and we asked for glasses and he gave us the equivilent of flinstone glasses. best bottle of wine i have ever had. deserved a nice glass. i should give that place a bad rating but i wont..