Another early start with le sorelIe up and about early, I could hear them chanting this morning, they may have been praying, I don't really know the difference!
I went to the bus depot early this morning to find out about going on my day trips. It turns out that the bus depot information office is actually a tour booking office. But the signora there was very helpful and told me that each of the places I wanted to go to is too far away to do in a day ie I would need to catch a bus at 5.30am, arrive four hours later, then one hour after that back on the bus to return to Florence, or arrive somewhere after a couple of hours on a bus, to change buses, get where I want to be for a couple of hours then have to repeat the process. Or I could get a car and drive, which I didn't particularly want to do again, I hadn't prepared myself mentally for driving! I was disappointed but decided to go and have a look at Empoli, a little town half an hour away on the suburban train. I wandered around, saw the men of the town gathered in the main piazza solving all the problems of the world and probably talking about what they would be eating for lunch or dinner tonight. I found a small cafe and had some breakfast, then another wander around and came back to Florence for lunch at the pizzeria downstairs. Oh My God - my lunch was delicious. It was on the menu as a vegetable tart with cheese sauce, but what I got looked nothing like we would think a vegetable tart would look like and it was the best thing I think I have ever eaten EVER.
I went back along the market and did a bit of shopping but I am becoming known there so think I will give it a miss for a while now. I had the adventure of needing to find a showe repairer - one of my VERY expensive walking shoes decided it had enough of walking around Roma and Firenze but no siree mister! That task wasnt as difficult as I thought, the lady at the information office helped me out with that. She did warn me that it would be expensive - and I'm walking around looking for the shop wondering what 'expensive' meant, I soon found out! He fixed my shoe while I waited and charged me 2 euro! Thanks very much cobbler man!
I decided to keep walking and went to the other side of Florence, the student part where the shops are different and I am so glad I did. I walked past a shop with the most colourful paintings and went in. Vlatko invited me in to look at his paintings and asked me how my name was. We soon started chatting, and I ended up in his studio for about an hour and walked out with an absolutely beautiful oil painting that I can't wait to hang on my wall at home.
I found pinocchio's shop, and the French woman in there was a pain in my fat arse, it took her forever to serve me, in between taking three phone calls, walking out the back of the shop, leaving me unattended and able to steal anything I wanted, which I didn't BUT I did touch the wooden car that had a sign on it that read "non toccare - don't touch" and when I did I actually said aloud 'that will teach you to walk away take so long to serve me' but it didn't! And I don't think she even knew I touched it!
I'm now about to decide on whether to get the on-off bus to the other side of the river tomorrow and spend the day in the gardens, or to get the train to Assisi. Or somewhere else.
I have worked out that I need to save my photos some other way on this tablet to be able to upload them here on to my blog, I just have to figure out where!
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