Hello everyone.
Heyo! Welcome back to Scattering Flowers with Elise and Miles, a podcast where we read the daily Gospels and the Saint of the Day.
Let’s get started.
Today is Tuesday, August 4th, and we only have a couple weeks left before school starts.
To wrap up the summer, Miles and I are going to give you a fun rundown of our Italy pilgrimage we took in April.
We spent two days in Florence.
If you recall yesterday, I said the architect and the fashion of Florence were my favorite.
We went shopping all along the streets, but there was a street market one of the days we were there.
It was located on a bridge.
That bridge is called the Ponte Vecchio.
That means the old bridge.
It’s a medieval stone bridge, the only bridge in Florence spared from destruction during World War II.
It is known for the shops built along it.
Building shops on such bridges were once a commonplace.
Butchers, tanners, and farmers occupied the shops.
The present tenants are jewelers, art dealers, and souvenir sellers.
The first record of it is in the year 996, but the one that stands today is from the year 1345.
During the Nazi retreat in August 1944, all of the Florentine bridges were bombed and destroyed except one.
Luckily enough, Ponte Vecchio was spared.
Yesterday, I think I told you that I got a little Pinocchio wooden figure that I brought home.
But people might wonder why there are so many Pinocchios around Florence.
Pinocchio, the famous wooden puppet, is the famous children’s book written by Carlo Lorenzini, a.k.a.
Carlo Collodi.
The Adventures of Pinocchio, the journalist and writer, was born and lived in Florence between 1800s and 1900s.
He wrote Pinocchio between 1881 and 1882.
In the popular Italian children’s magazine, Pinocchio originally should have ended in the 15th chapter with the death of Pinocchio by hanging, but the readers got angry and sent thousands of letters of protest to the newspaper.
So Carlo was forced to bring back his character to life and continue the story with the 36th chapter.
Today, Pinocchio has been translated into over 240 languages and published all around the world.
Thank you so much for listening.
We’ll be back tomorrow, Scattering More Flowers.
See ya!