Today I was scheduled to have one leg done for my vein treatment and the other is tomorrow.  Next week I do the final treatments for this year.  After the injections you have to walk for at least 30 minutes to help circulate the solution.  Despite a second night of a good nine hours of sleep I am still foggy and weary.

Next stop was to bring in two pairs of my walking shoes to get new heels as I had totally worn them down.  Guess I really did walk a lot.  I actually weighed myself this morning and I have lost weight in the past few weeks.  Not a lot but enough that my skorts are slipping down my hips.  I ate all I wanted to, pizza and pasta, as well as lots of good inexpensive wine not to mention fresh melt in your mouth croissants for breakfast s few times per week and still lost weight 😎   Can someone tell me why here in North American we tend to butter our croissants and add jam while in Europe your croissant is served as is?

I was also able to get in to see my GP ( general practitioner ) today within a few hours of my call.   She is rather concerned about my constant cough and did a swab for whooping cough which I myself had wondered about while in Europe.  I believe that the constant coughing is wearing me down.  I was very lucky to get in within a few hours of my phone call.  We than made a few stops to buy groceries so that we have food in the house.  Lots of other to dos like sending Colin’s main camera to Vancouver to have the CCD cleaned.  There are lots of jobs just waiting for perfect weather.

Still working on the accumulated snail mail that came in.  A bit of progress each day.  I am also working on my next post but between us I have to sort through 400 photos and edit them.  I have to say that that post is one of our favorite places in all of our four weeks abroad.

Don’t give up on me, but I really need a nap.

We got back last night.  Somehow you missed our move from Nice to Barcelona ( mostly because I never told you ), time just went too fast.  Click here for the link to our fabulous VRBO in Barcelona, sheer bliss.  Then Saturday morning we flew to Lisbon with a five hour layover before our flight to Toronto.  We flew Tap Airlines which was nowhere as great as Turkish Airlines in terms of business class, more on that later.  Saturday night was spent at an airport hotel in Toronto where we got a good seven hours sleep.  Yesterday we flew from Toronto to Calgary and then with a switch to a turbo plane home to Kelowna.  We were only home two hours before I had to go to bed, I was swaying on my feet.

Still lots of snow on the mountains but the lake has gone down so no flooding this year.

I slept ten hours last night and Colin eight, I think.  He spent the day returning things from the house and our cars to the basement while I opened mail and dealt with some business issues as well as doing four loads of laundry.  I still felt jet lagged all afternoon.  Colin also went and picked up our food when our friend got off work.  So we are now sort of back to normal.

I was pleasantly surprised to see this family paddle by this afternoon.

We are hitting the ground running between business and medical appointments, nothing to do with my falls.  I am fine and did get my stitches out  in Nice for 100 euros 😯   I do plan to finish our trip here in the blog but it might take a few days to catch up as I have at least 8 – 10  more post to do.  We have to finish Florence, zip thru Nice and Barcelona.  The reason you have been getting a post each day of late is because we had a rainy few days in Nice so I was able to finish Rome.  I just need to get back to my normal energy level and stop coughing and then I will be back to my Energizer Bunny level of activity 😉

Of course being so close to Pisa we planned a day trip to see the famous tower.  Monday, May 28th was our day of choice and we took the train.  Once in Pisa you can walk a few km to the tower or take a bus.  Because of me we took the bus.  The train was 8.4 euro each way and the bus 1.40 euro so the total excursion cost us 39.2 euro.

Can you spot Colin on the left? Me talking a photo of him taking his shot.

Colin’s photo.

So many people everywhere, most trying to get a photo of themselves holding up the tower.

After walking around and taking it all in we wandered into the village and stopped for a late lunch.  My very good spritz.

Pisa is know for its pesto.  Lunch was excellent, one of our better meals.

This is what I had while Colin wisely chose the best pesto ever.

Great view as we dined.

Wine is inexpensive at 7 euro for half a liter.

Yet another wonderful adventure on our trip.

Sunday, May 27th was our first full day in Florence and it was a full day indeed.  We figured out how to get to the Accademia Gallery with transit saving me many steps.  We had prebookded our tickets online @ 29 euros each, the extra 4 euros each allowed us to skip the line which was a good thing due to the length of the line.

My eye was going to get worse before it got better.

Everyone goes to the Accademia to see David.

David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created in marble between 1501 and 1504 by the Italian artist Michelangelo.

We spent a good deal of time touring each exhibit  but no other photos are being posted.  This is one of Michelangelo’s called prisoners or slaves. This one is called ‘The Atlas”, 1530 – 1534,

This is a description taken from the internet…

All the unfinished statues at the Accademia reveal Michelangelo’s approach and concept of carving. Michelangelo believed the sculptor was a tool of God, not creating but simply revealing the powerful figures already contained in the marble. Michelangelo’s task was only to chip away the excess, to reveal. He worked often for days on end without sleep, keeping for days his boots and clothes, as reported in Vasari’s chronicles about Michelangelo’s passion and talent. One can clearly recognize the grooves from mallet and pointed chisel on the marble surface used in this initial stage. Unlike most sculptors, who prepared a plaster cast model and then marked up their block of marble to know where to chip, Michelangelo mostly worked free hand, starting from the front and working back. These figures emerged from the marble “as though surfacing from a pool of water”, as described in Vasari’s “Lives of the Artists”.

In particular the sculpture shown above…..

Down the corridor on the left is the “Atlas Slave.” The male nude seems to be carrying a huge weight on his head. Hence he is named after Atlas, the primordial Titan who held up the entire world on his shoulders. His head has not emerged from the stone, leading the slave to support and push such a heavy weight, which threatens to compress him. The force of weight pushing down, and that pushing back up, create a vigorous tension. There is no feeling of equilibrium here, only an eternal battle of forces threatening to explode in both directions. This pressure generates a power which perhaps more than the other Slaves, expresses the energy of the figure struggling to emerge from marble.

We went for a walk afterwards.  Just a typical street scene.

The Duomo.

Another angle.  Spectacular colors.

The Palazzo Vecchio is the town hall of Florence, Italy. It overlooks the Piazza della Signoria with its copy of Michelangelo’s David statue as well as the gallery of statues in the adjacent Loggia dei Lanzi.  This is where we listened to the music the prior evening.

We also checked out some leather tote bags at the San Lorenzo Market but nothing caught my eye.  As I would walk away a few vendors just kept dropping the price and when I still said no, they said ‘Oh my God’.  I tried to explain that no matter the price I was not interested.

We toured the fabulous Mercado Centrale.  Naturally pizza and wine were on the menu for lunch.

Next on the agenda was our prebooked skip the line visit to the not to be missed Uffizi.

It is a large museum and we walked through all of it. This is a view of the Vecchio Bridge and the Arno River taken through an upper window.

Again I am not showing a lot of the photos we took.  This is one of the four paintings that Michelangelo ever painted.   ‘The Holy Family with the Infant St. John the Baptist (Doni Tondo)’, ?? 1504 – 1507.

Another special painting, Madonna of the Goldfinch.  Painted by Raphael in 1505-1506.  Jesus pets the goldfinch that John the Baptist holds.

Just before we left the Uffizi I went to the bathroom.  Colin had been holding onto me up and down steps and while out walking on the street.  He let me to to the toilet on my own.  There was a corridor and then around the corner, a long staircase. Just as I had come down the long strange staircase and started walking towards the bathroom I had a flash thought of falling.  Next thing I knew, someone was calling ‘senora, senora’ !  I came to, flat on my face.  I was flat on my face ( again my eyeglasses did not break )  and I had a small lump on my forehead and my nose hurt ( it would later turn yellow purple ).  What the heck!!  The couple who found me helped me up, it was not easy and I saw that there was only one tiny 1/4 inch ridge on a stone and of course I tripped over it.

I was stunned but proceeded to the toilet, did my business and was astounded that l looked much the same.  As I headed back to the stairs Colin appeared as he was worried that I was gone so long.  I finally had to ask him to stop scolding me ( in concern of course ) telling me that I should have come back to him and ask for assistance with the stairs and walk to the bathroom as he knew I was tired but at that moment I just needed to sit and get my head back together.  We eventually took a taxi back to the apartment and later Colin went out to the nearest place to get take out pizza which was best described as a four letter word.

Totally amazing that I was still in one piece after three falls, two on face.  The next morning we headed out on yet another adventure.

 

 

I sure didn’t look too good when I woke up on the 26th of May.  Sadly it was time to leave the most perfect ever VRBO/Airbnb rental.  I wanted to live there forever.

On the Metro on the way to the train station.  Serious business going on.

When I booked our train with Italia I was given a questionnaire to fill out and in return I was given a pass to their premium lounge in Rome.  Perfect.

Or so we thought.  First off it was down a side track, way way down.  We were the only ones there and the computer did not work for the agent to be able to tell us which track our train was leaving on.  She believed that it would be on the spur track where we now were.  As it got closer to departure she still could not tell us so we headed out and that is when we found out that our train was leaving from an entirely different area that we were in and we had mere minutes to catch it.  Usually a track is only  announced about 20 – 30 minutes before departure.  We did make the train with a few minutes to spare.

We were traveling Prima class on a senior fare and it cost 47.80 euros for both of us to take the 90 minute train from Rome to Florence.

Lots of space and we were served a beverage and cookies or peanuts.  No peanut allergies in Italy.  Lots of space for the legs and between our two seats.

As I was not in top form I was looking for an alternate to the long 45 minute walk into town which we did do this first day and it wiped me out.  Between my eye, the bruising on my knee and my cold it was time to find an alternative and that is what this shows.  Our VRBO was not in Centro historico as our host had claimed.

In fact I will have to do something about this fellow.  Half of the bedroom closet and all the drawers are filled with his personal clothing including underwear.  It took me an hour or so to figure out that the full fridge and freezer all belong to him.  When he doesn’t have a rental he lives in his apartment 😯  It was gross.  All his personal bathroom stuff was there etc.  Too late as we had already prepaid.  So it was a double whammy with the distance and the weird apartment set up.  Strangely he is the only one to date that has not sent a request for me to give his place a review.  I now know why he had so few recent reviews.  Once we get back home I will pursue this as it is just not right.

So we made the best of the situation and enjoyed Florence.  Can’t remember why I took this photo but Colin looks so happy.

Compared to Rome, Florence was a bargain.  1.5 L bottles of water were only .19 euro as opposed to .69 per 1.5 L in Rome.  So we ended up walking into Centro as it took us almost 25 minutes of walking to find a place that sold transit tickets so at that point we might as well walk in.   The company we had booked for a free city tour of Florence had closed in the last week.  The only other company that offered a similar tour did so at 11AM in the morning and we already had tickets booked for a few art museums.  Turns out we had a Rick Steve’s Florence city tour and we did 3/4 of that before I packed it in.  I could not walk another step. In the end it was a 17,000 plus step day.  We took a taxi home after dinner, 10 -11 euros, as I was unable to do anymore walking.

We were close to being done with our personal city tour walk when I heard opera being sung including some of my favorite arias.  We walked a bit more and there it was.  An outdoor stage in a piazza with a cast of many rehearsing for what we later discovered would be a concert right there that evening.  There were restaurants nearby and my spirits lifted.

I certainly don’t look too perky here. We did order pasta which I could barely eat even half of mine even though it was excellent.  Once the music started I did come to life just a bit more.

The concert was happening to the right of these folks who happened to be from Mexico.  Colin picked up on the language they were speaking and engaged them in conversation.  I only had energy for the music but came around.  This is Ingrid Cicero who lives in Merida, Yucatan with her partner whose name is written on another card that I can’t find at the moment.  She also owns a home near Progresso.  Merida is where Rae is currently living but she was in the Progresso area last summer.  At one point in our lives, we almost bought a beachfront apartment sight unseen in Progresso.  Crazy people we are. Now in the winter, we hang out on Isla de la Piedra, just off of Mazatlan.  So we have been invited to come and stay at any of their three homes on the Yucatan.   Nice people.

See, with some wine, fabulous music ( of which I had a few goosebumps up my arms from the music ) and stimulating conversation I really did perk up…..a bit.

It was a real surprise to find that Colin had taken this video.  So very special.  This was wonderful but I also appreciated the operatic arias.

In real time……….we have been in Barcelona since Tuesday, June 5th.  On a rainy day in Nice I was able to complete the Rome posts.  Tonight here in Barcelona I have a few free hours so enjoy the first Florence post.  But we won’t be here much longer.  Stay tuned 😎