My Feet Hurt
Once again, good intentions go out the window. We rose early to return the bike and get to the Galleria dell Accademia before the lines started to build up. As with all Italian timing, 8am means 9am and the scooter shop opened an hour late. This meant that we did not get in the line to see David until 9.30 and did not get in the door until 11.30am. These lines can be fun if you happen to be standing next to some interesting people, and today we met a lovely New Zealander, Jill and her friend Gwen. Jill was living illegally in France and renovating a 200 year old cottage to turn it into a B & B. Pity we were not going to Provence. The only thing to dampen the interesting conversation was the rain - and the hawkers, who were now selling their 3 euro umbrellas for 6 euros. As the BOSS refuses to wear her bright yellow raincoat, I sent her to stand alone, bored and shivering under a street awning. This is the first time we have seen rain since England, nearly a month ago.
I am a heathen. Much to my mother's disgust, I am not much into art or music - particularly old art and music - and especially old religious art. So apart from David, there was not much to hold my interest in this gallery. David was stunning and the room was laid out very nicely with several of Michelangelo's unfinished works lining the passage. It's quite a small gallery so we finished it in about an hour and headed back towards our hotel for lunch. We had been recommended a small restaurant, I' Brincello (via Nationale) and decided to give it a go. It turned out to be one of the best meals we have had. The BOSS had spaghetti with pesto while I had ravioli and we were so full we could not even indulge in the tiramisu.
As the weather was still a bit iffy, we thought another indoor gallery may be the go. We had two more galleries on the agenda: the Museo de Duomo and the unmissable Uffizi, both of which had notorious long lines. The BOSS had seen a Pop Art exhibition advertised which happened to be close to our favourite gelataria, so we wandered slowly in the rain back to the river. The cheesecake gelato was just as good as I remembered but the exhibition was closed. We tried the Duomo museum which was also closed (for the next 2 weeks) and the Uffizi, which had a 2 hour line and it was only 2 hours before closing time.
We strolled back through the leather market for one last contemplation of a red motorcycle jacket* and went back to the hotel for a relaxing evening of homework / emails /reading/ and resting our aching legs. Every day my feet, ankles and knees hurt and the BOSS is complaining of sore hip joints. I keep waiting for the day when I will start getting used to the new level of exercise and it won't hurt so much... but that day has not yet arrived... so I will continue to whinge.
* For all those wondering - no I did not indulge my whim!! but the shame of it is for just 20 euros more than my parking fine I could have had myself a beautiful red leather jacket, a much more memorable souvenir from Florence.
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