Note: Sorry for the delay. Here are the last couple entries while in Italy. I'll recap afterward.
Nov 2nd
I always regret that I don’t make enough time to explore my surroundings when I visit a new city or town for work. But then again, your first priority has to be the job. Leisure comes second. Of course. But this is Firenze we’re talking about. It’s not everyday that you get to come to a city in Europe with so much history behind it. Santa Croce. The Uffizzi. Il Duomo di Firenze. Il Ponte Vecchio. I mean c’mon!
The tourist areas can be really packed with people. You’re constantly weaving through the crowds to get where you wanna go. So having said that, Lauren and I decided to try a different route today. This was our second day off in a row. Final rehearsals and dresses will be upon us starting tomorrow. We open in six days.
We walked up to the Duomo and then kept on walking. I guess it was sort of North. Towards the train station. We gazed into shop windows as we passed them. We happened past what seemed to be an exhibit for Leonardo Da Vinci. Perhaps we’ll find that one again and check it out. Then we saw advertisements for convicted killers in one window. The sign over the door said “Museo Criminale.” A dummy of Hannibal Lecter restrained in his stand-up rolling dolly from the Silence of the Lambs movie sat posed about eight feet back from the doorway. We were in search of lunch. At one point, as we approached an intersection, Lauren turned around and said, “Don’t even THINK about it. No!” She’d seen it before I had. McDonald’s. I said, “Let’s go, let’s go!!” She replied, “I won’t trust McDonald’s in every country.” Fair enough. She said she’d had Burger King in Switzerland, I think, and that the cheese tasted funny. I chuckled at that comment.
We ended up at a Self Service café where you pick out your own food and take it to your table, instead of being waited on. The language barrier still gives me grief, but I make due. We sat and had our lunch. I picked out bow tie pasta in a pesto sauce. Lauren had tortellini in tomato sauce. The pesto was a bit much. I ended up finishing Lauren’s leftovers and leaving mine. Wasn’t totally into the pesto how I thought I’d be.
Nov 14th
The rehearsal process was a bit more demanding than I thought it’d be. That’s the reason for the gap in postings. Most nights, coming home was for showering and sleep. Or sometimes just sleep as fatigue would require that a shower wait til morning. The remounting of this show took a lot out of me. Rehearsals proved a little on the tedious side at times. Then the maestro had the schedule re-worked so that the singers could have a bunch more time in music rehearsals with the orchestra. It was nice to have all that extra time with the instrumentalists, but I’m SURE that easily attributed to the extra loss of energy at the end of the day.
