Now, two days later, Carter was still in Florence. He was sitting on the curb in the Piazza della Signoria, enjoying a cone of gelato as he admired the group of statues in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. Carter had never been one to eat sweets, but when he had tried gelato for the first time the day before, he had been hooked. The Italian ice cream seemed to him denser but smoother than the ice cream back home. Perhaps it was because of the warm weather, but somehow it had a more satisfying taste that he found irresistible. Stracciatella, a sort of vanilla ice cream mixed with shavings of chocolate, had already become his favorite flavor, but there were many more he had yet to try.

Carter liked Florence very much.There was much to see there, and it was brimming with people from all over the globe. He could not quite put his finger on it, but something about the place reminded him of Disney World. Just being there was fun. Across the piazza, for instance, a long, slow-moving line of people was waiting to get into the Uffizi Gallery. Carter was certain that it could not be a pleasant wait, standing out in the hot sun, as they were, but nonetheless he heard few complaints. Most everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. He had found it was like that just about everywhere he went in town.

When he finished eating his cone of gelato, Carter opened his pack and pulled out his guidebook to Florence to decide where he should go next. Since arriving the day before, he had already seen a great deal. He had visited the Basilica di Santa Croce, the church where the likes of Galileo, Michelangelo, and Machiavelli were entombed. He also saw there the funerary monument to Dante. Later, he had visited the Duomo and found it to be even more stunning than the one in Pisa. It also had the added virtue of the Campanile, the bell tower designed in part by Giotto, which stood next to it, straight as an arrow.

By this time, though, a sort of process of adaptation had already started to take place, and Carter found it increasingly difficult to feel impressed when each new church he entered was more astounding than the last. This particular day, he had decided against visiting any more churches for the time being, and instead had spent the first part of the morning at the Galleria dell’ Accademia, where he saw Michelangelo’s David and the famous unfinished slave statues. Later he strolled across the Ponte Vecchio and visited the Pitti Palace, before making his way back into the center of the city for lunch.