Italy in a Nutshell

Mom and I thought this little anecdote perfectly described our entire adventure in Italy. Enjoy.
We arrived in Florence and it was beautiful, after walking around the first evening we felt we had seen most major landmarks and sights. We really enjoyed ourselves. So the next day, we decided to get bikes and live the bike dream. So we head over to the train station in hopes of spotting a bike rental place, and we were successful. For only 1 euro an hour, we could rent bikes. So we walk over to the woman, who is busy with another client. We wait. And we wait some more. Finally she is done with the first woman, and proceeds to make some calls. She talks on her phone for a little while, and then sends some text messages, all while we are standing in front of her. Her daughter / business partner is sitting under an umbrella reading some Italian magazine completely oblivious to the outside world. And we continue to wait. Finally, the lady recognizes out existence. We tell her we want two bikes, specifically with baskets. She gives us the saddest two bikes in her collection, and they don’t have baskets. So we argue and end up getting me a sad bike (with a basket) and mom a nicer bike (also with a basket). After 5 minutes of her fiddling with the locks (she has a massive keychain, and is trying each one to see if that is the one for the bike lock) we tell her we don’t need locks as we won’t be stopping. She asks for our driver’s license, here is where her daughter translates for us. Proof that she knows we are alive. Mom gives it to her and we are on our way. We bike around and enjoy ourselves. Mom tried to kill us both several times by having us go against traffic or trying to take pictures while riding. After our adventure ended, we returned our bikes. The lady was gone and it was just her daughter. She asked for our locks, we told her we didn’t have any. She asked for our receipt, we told her we weren’t given one. She took the bikes, and brought out a basket full of drivers licenses, and told us to get ours. We selected moms and headed on our merry way. Oh Italia.