March 31st was the 85th anniversary of the Florentine Air Force, or something like that. When we went up Sunday afternoon (and had ICE in our drinks!!), we saw posters advertising a celebration. I had to see what was going on! The posters had fighter jets streaming colored smoke on them so I was convinced that it was going to be a good show!

What it actually meant was that Piazza Michelangelo was covered with bandstands that were filled with military types. There were a whole bunch of speeches, in Italian. I understood a few words but not many. I saw the president of Italy walk by, but I didn’t have the camera so no picture of him. There was a military band and some guys in goofy uniforms from the renaissance times and everything. Actually kind of boring.

There was a guy in black and white cammies wearing safety glasses that kind of freaked me out so we left after only about 15 minutes. (Plus I pissed some guy off real good and Jim didn’t want me to get killed.)

On our way back down to the apartment, we noticed that the bridges were COVERED with people. You can’t really see the Piazza from the bridges, so we were convinced that something good was going to happen. I grabbed my stuff (and camera!!) and we headed to the bridge to wait. For about ten minutes we were convinced that it was a joke that the Florentines were playing on the tourists. “Let’s see how many stupid American tourists we can get to stand on the bridge and stare at the sky!!” But our patience paid off:

I love this next photo. The jets are pretty far away, but you can see how tightly they are flying.

Then they came over for a second pass:

We waited and waited for maybe a third or fourth pass, but that was it. It was all over but the smoke:

It was cool. I’m glad I played hooky from work that morning to see it!