Beautiful views and paintings

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So apparently you can all read the missing entry, yes? If not, I discovered the problem: it's dated 2002 for some reason (the computer was playing up) so it's at the other end of the list of entries.

Today I went on the other walking tour run by the hostel, this time of the old town rather than the "Oltrarno", the other side of the Arno. It wasn't quite as interesting, since I'd seen the Duomo and a lot of the churches before, and the woman's English was so bad it annoyed me. But it was interesting enough, and she took us to a different good gelato place which is famous for its chocolate flavour, which was indeed very chocolatey!! The tour ended up near the Uffizi, and I went to the secret-seeming reserved ticket office, and they had tickets for tomorrow! The silly lying website had told me they didn't have any until the end of the month, so it must be a different cache of tickets. So I will be there at 11:15am tomorrow! (Lunchtime - not so good..)

After that triumph I went to the Palazzo Pitti again, this time to see the interiors and museum. I have to say, it managed to talk itself up a lot more than it should have done! The apartments were very impressive and interesting - most had been redone by Napoleon and then again by the returning Lorraine-Hapsburg Grand Dukes, so there were very few old old frescoes. There were, however, a LOT of paintings! Too many, I thought. They were too squashed together, but then I suppose they have to work withthe space they have. I saw some Titian and Angelo del Sarto and van Dyk (I'm not sure why he was there), which was nice.

I had lunch there, pizza of course, and a very nice chocolate truffle thing. Then there was the so-called museum of modern art, in the same building, which I had expected to be like the Musee d'Orsay in terms of period, but it was even earlier than that, starting in 17-something and with only a couple of things post-1900. They had an exhibition about the unification of Italy, though, which was interesting.

After that I climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed, up to Piazza Michelangelo - the hill from which you get panoramic views of Florence. And I did! I also had something approaching a slush puppy when I got to the top, I needed something cold! The view was amazing. Obviously there were lots of hawkers and tourists, but it was lovely, there was a breeze so it wasn't too hot, and I took about a million pictures 😊 someone took one with me in it, too!

I came back down about 5, and was going to go into the Duomo (I've only seen it from the outside so far) but it had just closed. I posted my postcards and bought some gifts from a shop with very nice people in it, and came back to the hostel. Only one more day in Florence! I might stay until lunchtime on Thursday, depending on the trains to Cinque Terre.

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