Shirley says the last time she visited Florence was in 1972, when she neither spoke Italian nor had become the experienced traveller she is today. She saw Florence guidebook in hand. I first visited Florence in 2006. Part of a Miksang photography group, we took the train from Chuisi to spend the day on assignment in Florence. We got off the train at Santa Maria Novella terminal, gathered at a post under a sign, “Bin 12,” were told to scatter, photograph people, and return to the post under “Bin 12” at 4 p.m.  Somehow I stumbled onto the Duomo and eventually onto the Ponte Vecchio, keeping the while to my assigned task. I allowed myself one work of art--David--standing in line at Galleria dell’Accademia for the real thing, then taking the above shot of the copy in the Piazza della Signoria: the rest of the day I photographed people and people photographing people, hoping to find David walking the streets of 21st century Florence. This young man, school backpack in place, might he be David?                                                           Or was he this young man?

I couldn’t decide, but the more I studied faces that May day in 2006, the more I thought I’d found David alive and well on the streets of Florence. I’m prepared to see him next week.

    In advance of this trip, we’ve been reading Florentine history. I have learned, for example, that, amazingly,  there is a building behind the copy of David in the Piazza della Signoria, a building, according to R. G. B. Lewis’ “The City of Florence,” that has a central place in the architectural history of the city--Palazzo Vecchio. Yet I had stood in front of it in 2006 and never saw it! One is chastened to find the cliche is true, “What you see is what you get.”

    The moral of this tale is that we are going to see the Florence we are prepared to see, nothing more. A chilling thought just days before we get off the train (at Bin 12?) prepared, we think tonight, to SEE Florence. Have we taken our eyes along? Let me look at that list from www.OneBag.com: two pair of eyes. Check!