Florence 28 October

My last free day in Florence before the conference starts tomorrow.

I think I’ve had enough of Italy now and I’m ready to go home. I regret a little extending my trip to include Florence at the end, because the original plan had been to go home with Simon after the cruise ended. However, it has clarified for me I think that I’ve had enough of learning Italian now. It’s been fun at restaurants, and understanding the occasional word in an opera, but I have no desire at present to take it any further.

The weather was lovely again this morning, and I had originally planned on taking the bicycle that is here in the apartment for a ride. However, on waking up early, I checked the ‘get your guide’ website and found there were a few guided bicycle tours I could join, and decided that might be the safest option. Accordingly, I headed out mid morning for the short walk to the tour office.
There were only two other people booked for the tour, a middle aged couple from Curacao which I think is an island somewhere in the Bahamas or maybe the Caribbean. In any event, they were polyglots who can speak not only the local language there but also Dutch, which is the official language, English, Spanish, and a few others. This really puts my foreign language studies in perspective.
Most of our tour was around the historical centre of Florence, which to my mind is heaving with tourists, even though our guide said it was pretty quiet. Mostly we just stopped outside a number of important historical sites, while she told us about them. Generally it was all about the Medici family and the Renaissance.

Neptune with the face of one of the Medicis

At one point we lost our guide in a mass of people near the Ponta Vecchia, she got quite huffy about it although it wasn’t as if we did it deliberately. I don’t think I saw her smile the whole morning. Towards the end she asked us if we really wanted to cycle up the hill to the Michelangelo Square viewpoint and seemed a bit put out that we did. No wonder because she struggled with the hill more than any of the rest of us. We had to stop twice to let her catch up. I’m not sure cycle tour guiding is the right career for her. The views up there were good, though.

On our way back through town she took us through the old dyers quarter, a working class district in the past. Marked on a couple of buildings in the central square are the heights of some previous floods. The worst one in more than 500 years was the one of November 1966.

The white marker (arrow) shows the height of the 1966 flood

After the tour I went back to the apartment for a quiet lunch and a nap. I went for another bike ride in the afternoon, just around a local park, and was glad I hadn’t tried to take it any further. It’s been left out in the open and is somewhat the worse for wear. The seat was rusted in place, for one thing.

I visited the conference venue after that as it’s only five minutes walk away. It seems it’s full steam ahead, although the grumpy lady behind the desk was no help to me as only exhibitors were allowed into the venue today, not participants. Plenty of time to check in tomorrow morning, as the welcome address isn’t until the afternoon. I will be very interested to see how well attended it is.

I watched the penultimate episode of “The perfect couple” on Netflix and then treated myself to dinner out. There are many eateries nearby, I just went to the closest one which was where I sat trying to keep out of the rain last week when I first arrived and couldn’t get hold of my host.

I had a glass of the local white wine and truffled ravioli, a local specialty, with a salad, which I ate outside, while reading my kindle. I have reverted to another Georgette Heyer novel that I’ve read multiple times before, a comfort read because I’m feeling a little down and lonely.

Table for one

Home early to watch the final episode of “The perfect couple” (did not see that coming) and then to bed.

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