Florentine days

Although I've spent the last few days hanging out with R, and eating and gossiping with J we've also done a surprising amount of sight-seeing. Staying in J's apartment is a pleasure in itself.
















But I'm slowly getting to grips with central Florence and its complex medieval Piazza and Via, and in particular the location of the site of my Conference which begins on Thursday. Oddly the medieval cloistre where it will be held is a military headquarters. We were unable to go further than the outer door and peek into the moorish gardens visible through a gate.


After tracking the elusive cloistre to its source (street numbering isn't entirely logical), we ate lunch in a tiny ancient place mostly underground and accessible via a series of concealed staircases and rat tunnels. I ate a local Tuscan soup of artichokes and other vegetables, with bread cooked into it, drank a glass of local red wine and it was all simple and delicious.


In this photograph you can just see the narrow doorway (between the shelves of wine bottles). The owners won't open at night. It was once a crypt and spooks them too much.
In passing, at the Conservatorium, we found a cello recital to go to tonight (Brahms and Debussy). I was also to hear the Kronos Quartet on Sunday night but developed a food sickness from eating blueberry ice-cream by the Arno and ended up staying home, ostensibly as the baby-sitter but I think the baby actually sat me.


R is six and attends school across the street. Both J and I went over to meet her at 4:30 yesterday afternoon. The school day is 8:30 to 4:30 for even quite young children, so it's a long day for them. The afternoon ritual is very different from the herd of 4WDs milling daily around Queensland schools. At R's school the children gather in the downstairs exit room and emerge, under supervision, onto a raised platform. The parents wait gossiping in a court-yard below. As a child spots its parent with a cry of 'Mama' or 'Papa' the parent responds to the call and waves a hand in return. It felt like weirdly like an auction, putting in a bid for the preferred child (ones own of course).



It's a lot of fun being around a child again but I'm under R's instructions not to tease, especially about Bababella who has no legs or ears. Here is a picture of Radha in her butterfly dream.





And here some other pix some of which are famous for being post-cards, some of which are famous for being paintings and some of which are .. well, interesting to me.

Tomorrow the LIIs (the Legal Information Institutes) are meeting from all around the world and I am able to go as an observer which I'm very pleased about. Once the meeting finishes (at about 3:30) we will travel into the country side and have dinner at the Tenuta di Capezzana and then be delivered back to central Florence by about 8:00 pm. I decided to stay at a central Hotel for a few nights as there's a possible bus strike at the end of the week. Even though I THINK I've mastered bus routes 14 and 20 sufficiently to get myself home again there may not be a bus to climb onto.