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June 5, 2018 We had wine in the hotel bar last night to celebrate our wonderful concert, and getting up today was difficult.
Another rehearsal today - from 0930 to 1330. It was grueling but we got through it and I feel much better about performing the Rossini piece. Brad Ellingboe did half the rehearsal and Peter Tiboris did the other half. It's difficult to get used to different methods of conducting from different people, and Peter Tiboris is not positive & encouraging like our other directors.
I had lunch with Barb & Ernie at a small place down the street from our hotel. Then we had a walking tour to the Pitti Palace & Museum. Thing always seem so slow and disorganized with everything we do. This also applies to the disorganization for 'Line up by size" for the concert. It was chaos and we weren't really lined up by size. I was happy to be up 3 levels so I could see Rutter well. Today it seemed very disorganized at the hotel before we even started walking over, and then disorganized to get our tickets. Once we got inside the tour went smoothly.
From Wikipedia:
The
Palazzo Pitti (Italian pronunciation:
), in English sometimes called the
Pitti Palace, is a vast, mainly
Renaissance,
palace in
Florence,
Italy. It is situated on the south side of the
River Arno, a short distance from the
Ponte Vecchio. The core of the present
palazzo dates from 1458 and was originally the town residence of
Luca Pitti, an ambitious Florentine banker.
The palace was bought by the
Medici family in 1549 and became the chief residence of the ruling families of the
Grand Duchy of
Tuscany. It grew as a great treasure house as later generations amassed paintings, plates, jewelry and luxurious possessions.
In the late 18th century, the palazzo was used as a power base by
Napoleon and later served for a brief period as the principal royal palace of the newly united Italy. The palace and its contents were donated to the Italian people by
King Victor Emmanuel III in 1919.
The palazzo is now the largest museum complex in Florence. The principal palazzo block, often in a building of this design known as the corps de logis, is 32,000 square metres.
It is divided into several principal galleries or museums detailed below.
Our guide told
us the Pitti family & Medici family were very competitive and when the Pitti family built this residence they wanted one bigger & grander than any Medici building. Then the Pitti's went bankrupt and who ended buying the palace? The Medici.
I've included photos from the tour. There is spectacular stuff here.
I walked to Piazza Michaelangelo on the hill. Little did I know that there is a HUGE sunset gathering here (kinda like in Key West). There were hundreds of people there. It was fun to just hang around, eat pizza & ice cream, & beer, and take sunset photos. I figured out that I could take a bus home because I was just too tired to walk all that way.
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Ben
non-member comment
Gorgeous vase
Absolutely gorgeous vase