Today I started my Italian lessons again at Scuola Toscana. It was so great to see Daniela and some of the others I know there from years past. She is a little perplexed with my lack of progress and has some ideas to make something happen this year.
After class I walked to Palazzo Medici-Riccardi on Via Cavour and saw the Gozzoli frescoes in the tiny Medici Chapel. Really, there were three of us in there and we could barely change places or turn around. "It's where they prayed," the guide told us, but I had a hard time imagining it, with laces and bustles and waistcoats and such. The frescoes are beautiful, resplendent in conveying the Medici sense of entitlement. Via Cavour, in front of the Palazzo and for several blocks, has now been closed off to traffic and is a pedestrian zone. It's somewhat surreal walking down the same street where you were formerly always in danger of being mowed down. It's my observation that the Italians really would like to hit a pedestrian, and are much more aggressive than even New Yorkers about clipping the back of your coat as you hurry up onto the curb.
Then I rode 15 minutes up to Fiesole on the #7 bus, and sat outside with a vino rosso at the tiny cafe across from the bus stop. If you've been to Fiesole, you know it. . . on the far corner, on the way to the amphitheater, across from the Cathedral. Everything else in town closed up tight, in spite of the gorgeous day and some tourists wandering around. I thought some about selling my house in NY and moving to Fiesole; it's an easy hop into Firenze and there seemed to be a lot of people my age, locals, gathering, chatting, and probably looking for something to do. I wish I had the guts to just do something like that, and why not? I could always move again if that turned out to be a disaster, but even if so I think I would look back on the time spent there fondly.
More wistfulness. . . .when does it end?