The big camera I borrowed stopped working yesterday. It made me very annoyed. Three museums to see today, the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay next week. I don't know what to say. I tried to search YouTube for ways to fix it, but naturally, it was beyond me. So I am now in a bad mood.
Well, allora. Luckily, the phone camera isn't terrible, although it is slow to focus. So I will have to get on with it and appreciate the stuff a bit more in person - which is probably the whole point anyway. I suppose I can just buy a book of the art if I wanted something to remember. Well, it is what it is. Still annoyed, though.
I had a moment midway through the second museum today, the Uffizi, where I honestly started getting a bit short of breath, a bit woozy. That museum is enormous, and the memory of it now is daunting. Of course, over this trip I've had to will myself to keep going a little, but right then I had a moment where I thought I was going to give up, at least after this one was over. Yeah, three museums today almost had me beat. Physically, and I don't really want to complain, my upper and lower back hurts, my neck is tired, most parts of my legs are a little achey from all the standing. Mentally, I'm just about stuffed to the gills with the art. Well, I had to keep going. They say that your brain naturally reverts to long, slow delta waves, even if you close your eyes for a minute - that's the sort of resting brain wave pattern that dominates in sleep, and which helps to reset the neurons and mental apparatus. Yeah, I managed to sit down and close my eyes for a while, and you know what, it helped. So I managed to gird myself a little and make it through the Uffizi, which is a really big museum. I probably didn't enjoy it as much as all the other museums, and I don't really have fond memories of it, which is a shame, but on the whole I still managed to see all of it. So that's ok, for me.
Well, I decided a did need a real break, so it was time for a good lunch. It turned out really well, actually. I ordered quattro formaggi spaghetti, but they mistook the order and pesto spaghetti came out. Well, it turned out well, because I noticed that they had a bistecca steak for twenty euro, and promptly changed my order. It was great. I got salad, cold meats, bread, and a five hundred gram t-bone steak - for the record, that was a big steak. Decided against a glass of wine, cos' I honestly didn't want to get too rosy before the last visit to the Palazzo Vecchio.
I liked the Vecchio; the lunch probably helped. There was a lot of the whole epic art murals, grand architecture and heroic sculptures. Not for the last time, I thought to myself, it's amazing how the old artists can be that good in different artistic fields. Like you think of Michelangelo, his painting, architectural works, and sculptures, and it just astounds, you know, like how much talent can one man have? Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, not to mention the countless other great Florentine and Venetian artists, and that's just the popular Italian guys. It's crazy how just good they were in Europe, the French, the Dutch, the Flemish, and so on. To see something in the flesh, to stand before the actual paintings and admire them, albeit inevitably restored here and there, it's so beautiful! So moving and emotional, so much depth and technique and artistic sensitivity. All the descriptions and analyses are unimportant; standing there and taking it in, reading the colours and strokes, the paintwork, the characters, the themes, messages and portrayed emotions, that's so much more enjoyable, so invigorating.
The Palazzo also had a tower, and that was lovely. It had a sheltered gallery area which offered all-round views of Firenze. As the sun was slowly hanging in the mid evening sky, and the wind puffed gently, I sat down on the stone benches and had a little nap. Boy, it was beautiful. It would have been spectacular if I've had waited until the sun actually set, as there were clouds girding the day, but that would have been an hour of hanging around, as the sun sets at like eight thirty. Anyway, I took my time there in the tower, which I'd probably love to visit again, honestly, then went down for some gelato and a view of the sunset from the bridges over the river Arno.
After that, back to the apartment. It's a really neat apartment actually, very classy and intelligent - there's a ton of books; it has Ai Weiwei and Honoré de Balzac, for heavens' sakes. I enjoyed the apartment, aside from knocking my head on a low beam. Well, I hope I'll get over the camera soon. Flying off to Paris tomorrow. Ciao, Italia. Arrivederci.
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I spent (in EUR):
7 - breakfast
23 - Galleria dell'Accademia
21 - Galleria degli Uffizi
21 - steak lunch
18 - Palazzo Vecchio
4 - gelato
53 - apartment in Firenze
