Day 25 - Florence 2 -Thursday 6th October

Day 25 - Florence 2

Thursday 6th October.

I wish I hadn't left this so long. Things are happening here in Assisi and I am writing about two days ago. So I'll try to be brief.

Woke early and left the Palace ( Emerald palace ) at 7am. Two bodies in the beds next to me. Not sure if male or female even. Visited the duomo in the side entrance. For prayer only.  So I went to an Italian mass and glanced up at the magnificent Dome from the inside.

Met Hannah, Sukun and Krishnan on the way to the Accademia where they keep Michelangelo's "David" and boy was it impressive. I kept walking away from it then to turning around and taking another picture. I couldn't believe how impressive it was. Fr Richard was right. And photos do not do it justice.

I accidently lost S&K after this and returned to Hannah's ( who didn't come into the museum with us ) to get her to pass on a message. Apparently they were waiting a long time for me who him rather embarrassed about. I went off to investigate the Piazza San Croce with its statue of Dante - from here and important for the history of Italy and the new movie previously mentioned -

- then the Piazza della Signoria, with a lot of cool statues - and outside Galileo's Museum, a clever  sundial - probably an hour and a half early for it to work properly.

With Hannah leading the way we went up the market near my place - a lot of leather sold at twice the price for the tourists hannah said. Then the food market where we had a fantastic plate if fresh pasta cooked in the shop of the market. Delicious and marvellous to watch how they made it as well.

After lunch we took a bus up to the Piazzale Michelangelo to look at a view of the whole city. The Duomo dominating as I said in yesterday's blog. An ice cream ... Yum ... Then we went for a bus trip or two up to Vaaaant's workplace - the Observatory as he works as a sound astronomer - even better view from up there and we were shown an 150 year old telescope.

The bus trip back was fun because the bus was tiny ...

And we had a closer look at the Roman wall that once protected the city.

The ladies got back early and cooked a delicious fried rice. I was impressed to see Hannah cook some bread- something she dies regularly now - in fact it was great to see how well they live in their cosy fourth floor apartment only 2 minutes walk from the Duomo - you can almost touch it out their window.

When I returned to the Palace I finally met one of the other occupants of my room. A young Argentinian girl who spoke English reasonably well.  She too had come from Venice and was off to Assisi the next day like me. We talked for some time about studying Medicine in Argentina and having difficulty with Catalonian Spanish in Barcelona where she was doing a spell in the hospital there previous to her travelling in Italy. She was meeting her boyfriend in Roma after Assisi. We had a good chat until after midnight. The other person sleeping in between us returned after 1:30 I heard ... But  I still wasn't sure if she / he was a girl or boy even.