the view of Florence from Lungarno Benvenutto Cellini |
I saw the announcement of this Firenze #bikewalk event last week on the Florentine after I came back from our holiday. So I shared it to our Indonesian Community in Tuscany on Facebook page. Unfortunately none of the ICT's friends interested to join. I personally interested in the event as it was related to a popular photo-sharing application, Instagram. My goals was to find new friends.
The bike ride started from the meeting point right at la piazza della basilica di Santa Croce
(the square of the Holy Cross cathedral). We biked to the area of San
Ambrogio and had a little stop in front
of Parrocchia di San Ambrogio, at the fork of Via di Mezzo, Via dei Pilastri and
Via Giosuè Carducci met with two long
busy roads of Borgo La Croce and Via Pietrapiana. There were about 70
people joined this #bikewalk event, the name of the event was actually really
fit to what we did, it was really a combination of bike and walk (with our
bikes), and chat whilst waiting for the rest of the participants to gather.
There at the small square of the Parrochia, I met with
Justyna and her boyfriend for the first time. It gave me relief that I finally
had a chance to chat and to get to know one or two of the participants. She is a
Polish who works and lives in Florence. She speaks Italian very well and even
offered me to meet up sometimes so I could practice my Italian with her. I was so
excited about it! Just then, we heard Tiana the leader and organizer of this
event said “Let’s continue, everyone!” The
ride continued through Via Ghibellina to Lungarno della Zeccha Vecchia. We
crossed Ponte San Niccolo' to Piazza Ferruci, continued along the Lungarno
Benvenutto Cellini and stopped at Piazza Giuseppe Poggi to take some group
photos. Remember that this event was related to Instagram, so taking photos and
uploading them on Instagram were huge deals during the whole event!
Tiana and Nicolo, myself at the back on the left and Justyna with her boyfriend, and Aslaug (^_^)v fun! Image courtesy @tianapix |
At this second stop, I had another opportunity to chat a bit
with Aslaug. From that short conversation I found out that she is from Iceland,
lives in Florence with her husband who works and studies in Florence and has a
little daughter. Tiana and Nicolo' ( a special guest of the event and a bike
blogger from Rome) took some welvies [=we, selvies ~ plural for selfy] and
group photos . Then the ride continued through
Lungarno Serristori, Lungarno Torrigiani, and turned left to Via Dè
Guicciardini when we passed Ponte Vecchio on our right. The original plan was
to have a stop at Piazza de Pitti, but as usual the piazza was crowded with
tourists already. So the stop was moved
to Piazza Santo Spirito.
During this stop, Tiana made an announcement to give away a
little gift ‘a cool Carrera sunglasses’
for each participant who follows the rule. That was, to take photos with other
participants with Carrera sunglasses on, to upload as many photos immediately
on Instagram and to tag participants you’re with in your photos. It was great
and a lot of fun, as we all started to mingle and everyone started to ask all around to take some photos together without any hesitation.
A moment later, after some rest and coffee for some, the
ride continued through Via Maggio, and along Lungarno Corsini after we crossed
Ponte Santa Trinita, to Lungarno Amerigo Vespucci all the way to Il Parco
Publico Le Cascine. Here at Le Cascine, I said good bye to Tiana and headed
home for another appointment that day. It was certainly an enjoyable fun ride and
a great #bikewalk event.
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