That’s a stretch/groan of an allusion to tPB, jsyk.
Anyhow, we didn’t, you know, spend the entire time in Florence at the Uffizi. We could have. After we had decided we were all arted out for the afternoon and thought we had seen most of what we wanted to see, we still had to walk for ten minutes out of the museum, just glimpsing another 6-8 hours worth of colored oil & canvas. But we were hungry. So we ate pizza and drank peroni.
Snack time after a hard day’s art viewing
Then we went and saw… shoot, I don’t remember what it was called. On our Florence map, our b&b hostess had helpfully labelled a large building tombs! which held the tombs of Galileo, Machiavelli, and Dante Alighieri. Not the other Dante. And about ten thousand other folks. Becca’s shorts were too scandalously short for the security guard, who instructed her to tie her cardigan around her legs, so that was pretty funny.
Next up was the Synagogue, which we had high hopes for because we had enjoyed the one in Siena so much. It was nice, though we didn’t get a dedicated tour guide like in Siena. I wasn’t wearing my hat this day, so I had to borrow a kippah. First time for that. They didn’t provide little clips, unfortunately, so I kept patting my head to make sure it was still on. We were being followed pretty closely by one of the staff members, and I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be pleased if it fell off. Nobody would have been pleased. Anyhow, it didn’t fall off. We couldn’t take any photos inside, but it was very pretty. There was also a vegetarian restaurant next door, and in retrospect I can’t figure out why we didn’t eat there. I haven’t had tofu in weeks! Oh, probably just a week and a half, but still.
No photos allowed inside the grounds
Um. Man, I don’t have any interesting stories, so I’ll just summarize. We got some coffee, walked to a big park on the other side of the river (there’s a river), took photos. We spent 45 minutes trying to pick a place to have dinner, ultimately deciding on the first place we saw. Then we had a digestif at an actually kinda sketchy place, then bedtime. Doctor Zigler had an early morning presentation, which reportedly went well, so Becca and I feel like we can take some credit for putting him in the correct frame of mind.. or something.
The next day, we went to see the David, but the line was long and the museum was expensive. Luckily, on the way there, we saw a store with five(!) Davids in the window- no wait and no admission. So that was pretty much a better deal. We did go up into the Duomo dome, which was amazing. We were literally walking inside the dome! So cool!
Three for one
That was followed by wandering and photo taking and eating at the Italian Ruby Tuesdays. (It had pictures on the menu AND advertised as being good for tour groups. What were we thinking?) Then it hailed. Then we went to our hostel, got our stuff, were given a plastic bottle full of wine from the hostess, and took a train to Ancona, where we got on a ferry, said goodbye to Italy, and set “sail” to Croatia!
Oh, it doesn’t matter much, but we also met this American Dude who was heading to Split to go to ULTRA and he was amazed we hadn’t heard of it. There’s also one in Ibiza and Miami and he couldn’t believe we hadn’t heard of them either. So: ULTRA is an important thing and there’s probably a DJ named Apple Jack (?) who’s a pretty big deal.
