So woke up tired, so tired forgoing breakfast was a good idea...until I heard reports of 'stace you must have loved seeing soy milk at breakfast ' grrrrr first time and I missed it....oh well build a bridge.
Clambered on the bus and went to see a museum with the real Michel Angelo's David. there were all sorts of his sculptures completed and in the incomplete stage. It was amazing to see how be created his master pieces. He was the only artists to sculpt from marble without using a model. The incomplete pieces revealed themselves slowly from the marble. It has been said that he would choose particular pieces of marble that had the form / lines / structure of the form he wanted to create. He sculptures up until 8 days before his death well into his 80s. He only once broke a price off a female form he created and went to destroy the entire piece...perfectionist much? But seriously he was a creative genius. The amount if talent, creativity, free and critical thinking and imagination that was born in this country around this time is astounding. Granted when you go to a country they 'sell' their famous people but you really can't go past Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticini, even the scientist Voltaire was born in Lake Como- he invented the battery. Don't get me wrong I'm not whiz at general knowledge but I taught it to kids for 4 years when studying electricity. All of the history is rubbing off on me and I'm even considering reading up a bit more, as at this stage when they say 'its obvious the difference between Gothic style, renaissance and other ( I'm not even sure I'm getting the terms right here) I'm standing their nodding with absolutely no idea ! Lol
So we walked around being amazed. You could get quite close and see amazing details of the muscle tone and veins on David's hands and other bits ..... Well it's right there you can't help but look. Unfortunately the sate in which I woke up... Being bone tired was just getting worse and I literally almost fell asleep standing up :(
We then moved on and started a walking tour around the centre of Florence. It was beautiful. Amazingly decorated cathedral and doors that were engraved and contained little sculptures. One disadvantage of going on all of these tours and essentially being fed the main highlights without having to do much research, is that when it comes to writing down and recording what actually I saw I'm can't recall names let alone spelling. Maybe someone will look at my photos and tell me lol
After the tour we were led back to Latizia who shepherded us through a gold / jewellery store and leather department store where you can't but feel you are being a bit manipulated and wonder how much of a kickback the tour company gets. It's unavoidable and I guess has only happened on a handful of occasions so it is bearable ....just
Gail and I then had a much needed coffee and Panadol to stave off an oncoming sleep deprived headache and started shopping. Voila!!! Headache gone and shopping adrenaline kicked in. I'm proud to say that I didn't impulse buy and did some research and went into many a store. A bought my first black leather jacket!!! Woo hoo. It's hard to choose, found a beautiful soft lamb leather jacket but even splitting it around cash and various credit cards it was out of reach. Others were cheaper but not so well fitting until I decided upon a classic shape and style that suits me. Nothing too outrageous but that's for my next trip to Italy lol.
After the shopping frenzy I had planned to meet up with an old friend Devorah who lived in Florenece with her daughter and husband. We had messages back and forth for a couple of weeks and with our busy schedule and baby timetable it was hard to arrange but we were adamant that we would make it happen. I left the tour group and had detailed directions from Devorah. Simple enough but I'm always amazed when I can actually follow instructions given. On the way to meet Devorah and Miriam, Devorah had pointed out this amazing jewellery shop. These rings were works of art - seriously not a good place who has a self confessed 'problem' with buying jewellery. Just as well the rings I liked ranged from €4000-€8000.... Slightly outside of my price range lol have a look www.alessandrodari.com. It was soooooo nice to actually see Devorah and Miriam on the street. We gave each other a giant hug. I haven't seen her in over five years at least but that didn't matter at all. We chatted, jabbered, spoke and swapped stories and gossip for ages, under the gaze of a not so friendly waiter but I didn't care. It was so cool hearing about life in Italy from her perspective, hearing her speak in Italian like a pro. We walked down to her husbands studio where he and some other restorers worked, some who worked with frescos, glass, paintings and sculptures . It was seriously amazing to see the artefacts just sitting there. Devorah showed me a sculpture from the 13/14 century under a sheet... You know just sitting there, amongst coffee cups, modern day paraphernalia ... This old thing lol
Walked home along the river. It was quite pretty, watching the lights go down. Almost felt like I knew where I was gng, and that I may have almost shaken off the fearful tourist image. Arrived bk at the hotel to see Latizia organising things though seemed relieved to be away from the group who were all on a day trip. She really is a saint for putting up with some of these people ... Not that she has much of a choice. She was laughing when she told me that someone complained that there had been a ghost in their room the night before! I mean seriously!!! What is wrong with these people??? I collected my laundry, signed it pretty much without looking and headed up stairs. It wasn't until I looked that I nearly had a coronary SHIT!! Not even going to say how much it is and u would think I would have learnt from my last laundry experience but alas and also out of necessity it kind of needs to be done. That along with my phone seem to b the hidden costs of this trip.
About an hr later we boarded our trusty bus again and headed to a ornate house and were given a talk by the Count who ran it and the olive making operation there. I think they filmed room with a view there. It was elaborate and beautiful. I think by this stage we were a bit over listening to more explanations and became a little silly eg doing sale of the century actions to show off the fire place and having somewhat inappropriate actions around half naked busts and photo bombing other people's photos specifically Wendell 's because we knew it annoyed him lol.
We then had dinner with the Aussies, roger, two other Australian ladies and two American friends. Good table! We all seem to have e same sense of humour and view of the trip, that being we loved it and took it all in our stride. We also had the same reaction to a song sung by one of our travel 'buddies' ( read that as seriously irritating classically overbearing and complaining American ). Our reaction being that of ' are you kidding me? Really? This really happening?.... The bullshit meter was wavering considerably. Any who the company was great, food interesting, lots of different coloured puddles of puréed things lol. Left the mansion and went home on the bus while listening to American racist jokes and to our second last night of the tour....possibly reaching my limit of over 65 Americans
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