Day 7 - Florence: leather jackets and hailstones

We made a lateish start to the day, assisted by finally buying some tea bags and milk (reducing the urgency to get out and find breakfast). Once we did venture out somewhat after 9, we found a rather cheaper breakfast than yesterday, with extra bonus excellent signage.

We passed the gobsmackingly long queue for the Galleria, and moved on the the Leonardo da Vinci museum. It had made models of lots of his inventions based on his drawings, many of which you can operate, and many of which are still in use today largely unchanged. Others are just remarkable and straight-up ingenious.

Scythed Chariot, pulled by two horses, the scythes rotate

It's a paddle pedal boat, suitable for tweetle beetles

Returning from the LdV museum, I got the boys to line up in the queue for the Galleria while I went to the front to investigate how long. The couple at the front of the Non-reserved queue had been waiting for an hour and a half. While talking to them, another woman in the Reserved queue said she had just bought tickets at the ticket office a little way up the block, for a four euro premium. So I moved the others to the Reserved queue and went to the ticket office. To get the kids rate (booking fee only) for the kids, I had to get proof of age. I bought tickets for JD and me (11 plus booking fee) for a 3pm entry, and then dashed back to our apartment to get the boys' passports, and then back to the booking office to get their tickets.

In the meantime, I sent JD and the boys off to look at leather jackets. Jos particularly had been nagging horribly for one. In hindsight, I shouldn't have left JD in charge of their purchases - he's not as stingy with money as I am. The boys jackets were double the agreed budget (at 180 euro a piece), and JD completely went overboard with a fully reversible antelope leather jacket (glossy on one side, matte on the other).

I also had had plans to get a jacket while we were here. The one that I had spotted on my first day actually looked dreadful on me, but after trying on a number of other jackets I found one that flattered me reasonably, and that I knew I would get a good amount of wear out of, and negotiated him down to a reasonable price (200 euro).

Yes, I know, we make very glum models - we hate having our photo taken

As we admired our respective purchases, the heavens suddenly opened as a heavy hail-and-rain storm hit. We were bloody glad we weren't standing in a queue somewhere, particularly one we'd been waiting in for over an hour. Another advantage of being at the apartment is we could move the rubbish bins to collect the rain leaking around the skylight.

Drifts of hailstones were everywhere - this is just outside our front door

It's now 1:30pm, and we're about to venture out to find lunch before heading to the Galleria dell'Accademia to queue for our 3pm entry. We'll return for dinner and pack before our last night in Florence. We head to Paris via Pisa tomorrow.

Requisite shot of David's bum

The Prophet Malachi

One of 13 surviving Stradivarius violas