Friday and no plan...

But it turned out all right.  I don't remember too much about the morning - maybe worked on finishing the wine tour post?  At any rate I decided I would go to Mercato Centrale, the huge market that I always go to at some point and get a sandwich for lunch and then look around.  So I did - got a porchetta sandwich and the place I got it only made sandwiches.  They had no soda or even water but when I asked he said I could get one "over there" with the now habitual fling of an arm.  So I pointed myself in that direction and sure enough came to a spot where there lots of tables and a cooler full of drinks and a harridan of a woman standing guard who as soon as she saw me, and before I could open my mouth, gave me a hand-waving "no,no, no - no eat here".  I tried to say I wanted to buy a Coke but no-no.  So I left and went to the cafe type place across the street from my hotel, bought a Coke and went and sat outside on a stone bench in the piazza.  The sandwich wasn't all that good after all that. :)

Anyway, then I decided I was going to spend the money on a ticket to the Duomo complex of places - cathedral, bell tower, baptistery and museum.  I really just wanted to get to the roof of the museum like Chris and I did one evening without even knowing it was there (if I remember right)  I think we just thought we were going up to the next floor.  So that's what I did and here are some pictures (probably posted in 2017 and even before cause I think this is my third time in the museum) but they're pictures.

First view and fairly crooked I guess...this is looking down the side of the cathedral where people gather if they want to go up the dome stairs to the top.  I guess it was kind of early yet - not too many throngs.

 And this is a picture of just one of the panels on the doors of the baptistery.  These doors were made by Ghiberti whereas the doors on the cathedral were made by Brunelleschi and I remember thinking when I saw them both for the first time, that actually Ghiberti's were more powerful I guess would be the word.  I took this from pretty much the side so it shows how deep his panels were - the people's heads and whatever else is in the scene stick out past the surrounding frame.  Supposedly the originals of these doors and the original of Brunelleschi's doors are in the Museum but I only saw one set although I didn't go into every single room.

And this was an actual framed painting hanging at the landing of a stairway!  It must not be all that remarkable although I liked it.

 The picture below shows the actual model that Brunelleschi built to show his plan for the cathedral.  The picture above shows a close-up of one of the lower domed parts (are they chapels inside? - can't remember) and you can see that the wood is very old and cracked here and there.

 These two are some of the tools Brunelleschi had to dream up, design and build in order to get the dome built.  When I climbed the dome in 2009, these were displayed here and there on the way up when there was a wide enough space to hold them.  I wonder if these are copies and the real ones are still up there.  But not enough to make another trip to the top!

So here I was finally at the rooftop terrace of the museum and up close and personal with the dome.  You can't really get a very good picture because of things like the house in front of it, wires, cables, etc., but I did really like the cloud effect over the dome.  Didn't even notice it until I opened the picture on the computer.  If you look at the brown brick band on the right hand side, and over to the far right of that band, you can see what is a very large crack.  But the guard when I asked about it assured me with lots of Italian and lots of hand language that it would not be falling down any time soon. :)  And later I was searching an old blog for something and, of course, there were pictures of the Duomo and the crack was visible then so it's probably an ancient crack on an ancient dome.

These people are lined up in front of the cathedral waiting to go in.  And the picture below follows that line around the corner and down the side of the cathedral to well past that guy in the black t-shirt with his back to the camera.  I remember my first visit, I just walked in.

And below, another sad sign of change...

I went down to Perque, No? (gelato) and got a small cup of very good (as always) chocolate sorbet rather than gelato.  Spoke a bit to a couple either from Australia or Seattle (like on the wine tour) for a bit which is always nice.  They were with another couple and wanted to get one of Tuscany's famous Fiorentina steaks which are served and priced by the kilogram.  They won't sell less than 400kg I think it is so I finally got to have one when Chris was here with me.  Anyway, I recommended my favorite restaurant (Enzo e Piero) and they wrote it down, looked at their maps, saw it was close enough to their hotel and decided that's where they'd go.  Hope they did, and hope it was good...

 And I have to say, I really like this picture of the upper facade of the cathedral.  The detail is so much clearer than when I take just a picture of the whole front.  This one I used my zoom some and stood relatively close and just pointed up so it's sort of showing the underneath here and there which gives some idea of all the carving that went on.  Plus, the green and pink is showing up nicely.  Bella, bella.

 And then since I had the ticket I went into the Baptistery and decided that I would take a picture of each panel.  But by the time I worked on them this morning, I'm not 100% I accomplished that.  But here they are anyway.

I'm trying and trying to think what I did after that.  It was heading towards evening.  Oh, I remember.  I was going to go to that concert that I forgot to go to on Wednesday.  So I went home, cleaned up a bit, must have had a bite of something for dinner and started walking.  The place was quite near the river and Florence was jumping with some early nightlife.  Got there and learned that it was a concert of "the three tenors" rather than the violin concert I had been expecting and one tenor would be more than enough for me - it was in honor of the original 3 tenors who were quite a big deal quite a while ago.  So I inquired and found out that the one I wanted would be performed tonight (Saturday) and figured I would try again, although I wasn't sure that my ticket would be accepted because of course, I had reserved for the Wednesday.  But now it's a moot point because the woman who joined me one evening when we were both solo dining and she was going the next day to a pottery class, got back in town and I had an e-mail from her this morning saying she was back along with a lady she had met in the class and would I still like to have dinner?!  So, yes, of course I would and could I recommend a restaurant?  Well, of course I recommended Enzo e Piero and I am really hoping they might have Peposo on the menu tonight.

Oh and that reminds me - I remember what I had for dinner last night at a restaurant right here on the piazza and that was chicken cacciatore which I had never had in all my years of eating Italian food.  The taste was really wonderful - just on the verge of being spicy - but I've read that it got its name because hunters out hunting would take a rabbit or something else they had caught, and cook this for their meal.  So it's considered a very rustic dish and that was my only problem with it.  I ended up with three ends of drumsticks which sure don't have much meat, and there were bits and pieces of bone that I would chunk down on and have to delicately remove.  It was really kind of a mess but I kept at it because it was really really good.

And you know what?  This is probably the end of this post because that's about as much as I did yesterday.  I did do just a bit more Christmas shopping just in case my kiddies are wondering.