My first night in Florence is something I’ll never forget. Not only was the city absolutely breath-taking, and the magnitude of the Duomo unforgettable, but at night on the way back there was some action in the Piazza dell Repubblica.  While strolling back to the apartment after dinner at Giannino’s Ristorante, we noticed a large group of people and heard lively music coming from the Piazza dell Repubblica. There were multiple people in costume wearing Zorro masks and holding signs, so we went to investigate. I thought it was a parade of some sort because the music was so upbeat and since we couldn’t understand what everyone was saying we walked into the crowd to see for ourselves just what was going on. We were dancing to the music when we looked up and saw multiple communist flags. The first thought that we had was “Oh God did we just accidentally join a communist rally?” Everyone in my group looked at each other and realized that we needed to get out of there pronto. As soon as we escaped the crowd we passed a line of police officers in riot gear that were headed into the piazza. Upon seeing the officers we quickly got across the Ponte Vecchio where the only crowds were around the street musicians. We were so relieved to be in a place where we felt safe and the one performer’s beautiful singing brought a sense of peace to us so we stayed to watch some of the groups set. We didn’t understand what they were singing, but we didn’t need to we appreciated the music and danced to it in the street anyways.