Firenze - Day 2

I am so freakin' PROUD of myself!!!  Using my very best (bad) Italian, I negotiated a private viewing of the paintings I could not see yesterday because the rooms were chiuso. As you might expect, this being Italy, the rooms with the paintings I wanted to see were CLOSED again today!!  Erk.  The first guard did not understand the message written on the back of my ticket from yesterday--she passed me off to another guard to deal with it. Again, I explained--in Italian!--and bingo! she said (in Italian, certo!) she would let me in for "5 minutes". She released the red velvet rope barrier, and I went in.  Whoo-hoooo!  Not only did I get to enjoy the two rooms of paintings, all to myself, but I stayed there about 45 min.  She never came back! So, I am proud because I got to see the paintings, but moreover, because I negotiated this all in Italian!

After siesta time (well, a shower!--it's hot here--and a brief successful stint on the internet, making the car rental reservations--FINALLY!), I went back out to see what gives in Florence in the evening. Oh geez... what?  I will have to upload the videos later, when there's bandwidth to do so. I thought the folk/pop singer on the Ponte Vechio was good, until I stumbled into the Piazza Publico? (name? fact check later) and found the opera--complete with symphony--rehearsing. I guess they were rehearsing--some cheeky ragazza was hopping fences and gesticulating to the conductor and stopping the performance periodically... even more fun! Just had a giant grin on my face the whole time. (Post video later.)

Then, as if that weren't icing on the cake, I moseyed over to where the Pollock exhibit was advertised, to see if I might have time to scoot in there in the morning... and that museum was open 'til midnight!!  Ha!  So, of course, I went for it, climbing the 80 bazillion stairs up to it, through the chambers of (Eleanor and who all?, I didn't take notes) and through the ginormous hall of the (city councilors or something?) and some little private chapels and more flocked and gilded and filigreed and frescoed and.......... etc. until I finally got to the exhibit. Saw the 15 or 20 works (eh--I still don't "get" Pollock), and hustled back to hear the end of the opera, down in the square.
Treated myself to a cab, and got home sometime after midnight.

[Note:  pics were seruptitiously obtained with phonecam, so not great. The "autoritratto" held me spellbound for a while, tho', so am inserting it for the record.]

5/25/14