Surprise! Guess who was in Florence today? & Knitting 1

Lizzy! Yep you heard me. It was a total coincidence that Heather and Gary planned to be in Italy this weekend at the same time as Henry and Al and they agreed to meet in Florence today. 

Apparently Lizzy brought along some Scottish rain, the first real downpour the brothers have seen in Italy. 

Maybe watching it will make it stop:

Henry says the venders immediately switched gears and began selling rain paraphernalia but they found they could stay mostly dry by moving under arches and awnings. 

And I am happy to see that Lizzy subscribes to my theory that if you can't have fun with rain you just need to try harder. 

Heather says the brothers were awesome tour guides and Henry says they were able to get them to 4 different sights/sites because they've been walking around enough to know where they are. He said you'd think you could see the duomo from anywhere but that couldn't be further from the truth. The streets are so narrow that you can't see anything but the walls around you and none of the blocks are square so Heather and Gary probably saw a lot more in one day than most people do. 

Henry said Lizzy was terrific and so cute that a lot of people were taking pictures of her instead of the sights. 

Looking heroic:

The pigeons were one of the favorite things. 

But my favorite pictures of the day were on the carousel the brothers had found for Lizzy last week. 

Pictures from Heather's camera:

Lizzy and Heather and Gary headed back to Pisa on the train where I'm sure Lizzy had a well earned nap and Heather says they had a really lovely sunset walk. 

The brothers are headed to Rome tomorrow for the day on this fast train:

And maybe I'll show you their pictures from Pisa yesterday another day when I have Lizzy's too. 

We need to get started on the pictures from yesterday's International Knit in Public day in Stratford!

We were feeding chopped up corn. 

Lots of posing but some real smiles too. 

I took lots of pictures of ducks that I will show another day but except for one, the swans were having none of me. However later, once I had moved away from the river to sit in the more comfortable seats in the van, Deborah took pictures of this swan approaching the knitters. 

I believe he was there to collect some knit taxes!

&

Tuesday morning when the brothers start out for home: