On the road again

"On the Road Again." Hey, does anyone know what happened to that show? Do any of you even remember it, because I've got some pretty vivid memories of watching it in the living room of the old house...  

Anywho, hey, welcome back! As you've probably guessed, I'm in transit again. This time I'm headed for Nice, France, and I'm on a Busabout bus. How is that? Actually, I've got to say, pretty nice. It's not quite the same as being on a coach with my Contiki family, but the coach itself is pretty similar. No toilets, but a power station, and each seat has a bevy of controls on it for inboard music and movies, so that's a plus. Actually, on the way to Nice we're watching some Casino Royale to get us in the mood for Monaco. 

Yesterday in Florence I waited in a line-up for nearly two hours to get into the Galleria Academia, and even though it was a long line, the wait wasn't bad. The family in front of me had two adorable little girls, I had my iPod, and I did a lot of people watching. You know, the gallery was worth the wait. Yes, I saw the original David and his precursors, but there was also  lot of old artwork. Old, like, 13-19 century pieces taken from various churches and restored. There were rosters with Dante's name on them, old law-books, and looks of neat pieces, including a room dedicated solely to musical instruments. 

After the Galleria, I walked to the Church of Santa Maria Novella. This church was absolutely gorgeous, both inside and out, and because there were a few different tours going on in English, and because they all looked about high school age (and apparently I did too) I managed to partake in part of a history of art lesson. Oops? But yeah, the church was gorgeous, the frescoes were incredible, the statuary was limited, but intense, and the courtyard was so incredibly peaceful that as I sat, writing about my day in my travel book, all I could hear was murmured voices, birds, and the wind. This made it incredibly easy to imagine what things could have been like a few hundred years earlier, and therefore, if I decide to do some research and writing there is potential in some of the things I've got written down in another book. 

When I finished at the church I headed back to the hostel to drop off some stuff in my locker and make room in my bag so that I could head over to the grocer and pick up some food for breakfast and traveling (breakfast was €0.40 yogurt, which actually tasted amazing and had 5g of protein in it, a banana, and some cracker-type things, and snacks are bananas and the cracker things. I've got Brie to go with them when I'm not on the bus). After the grocer it was back to the hostel for some cheap dinner, which was actually a really nice gnocci dish with a glass of white wine (which was okay, not amazing), repacking my bags, and a reasonable 10:30pm bedtime. Nothing too out there for me on my last day in Florence; I had a 6:45 wake up!