Florence

I left Rome yesterday on the 11:10 train. Everything went smoothly and arrived at my Air BnB at 1:10. It still quite hot here with it hitting 33 yesterday afternoon. My body shuts down above 30 so I took it easy until 630 when I headed out on my Rick Steves audio tour of Renaissance. I met two American woman also doing the same tour. We all thought that was pretty funny. Florence is known for its beautifully Domed church, the Duomo, the Medici family of bankers, Michelangelo, the renaissance and art. I managed to cover these all on the tour.

Today I was up early for my visit to the Uffizi. I also did a Rick Steves audio guide tour which was well worth it. He tours you around and show you the15 best art pieces and explains their cultural significance, just as if you had a tour. Botocelli's the birth of Venus, three Leonardo DeVinci's no one was paying attention to and more. It's funny how people fawn over the Mona Lisa but then totally ignore other pieces. After Uffizi I headed over to the Bollergo museum and checked out some more art including two sculptures by Michelangelo who no one seemed interested although people will stand in line for hours to see Michelangelo's David which is also here in Florence. So odd. By then it was noon and getting hot so I decided to bus it to a public pool where I have been hanging out with my wonderful new swim cap and some fellow Canadians. Two woman from Halifax and then another woman who is from Edmonton/Stoney Plain. I mistook the Haligonians for two American women I had met in the line up for the pool. The woman from Stoney Plain was sitting close to me by the pool and was talking English to her daughter. She didn't have and accent. If you meet someone in Europe speaking English without an accent they are either Canadian or learned their English in Canada. She was a school teacher who had moved to Italy with her Italian husband who she had met in Vancouver. Interestingly her parents were from Hudson Bay SK where Cheryl's mother grew up. She knew of Cheryl's Aunt Agness and Peter who owned Llewellyn Services- The snowmobile dealership in town. Small world. My conference starts tonight so I probably won't blog until the end of the conference as pathology probably doesn't interest many of my audience.Read more