Flaneurs

Woke to a beautiful sunny morning and we set off to explore the town again. Still quite quiet…we knew several of the museums would be closed on Mondays but a lot of the small shops were too. Lovely to just wander around seeing all the different buildings and turning at random down the little cobbled streets and colonnades.
We enjoyed exploring the market and all the beautiful produce; includinglots of artichoke hearts being prepared by people at the side of each veg stall. I was pleasantly surprised how I felt more confident than when we were in Siena in May about speaking some Italian and understood more.
We stopped for coffee and a pastry at a little cafe in one of the squares, sitting in what felt to us to be hot sun, although all the locals were in jumpers and jackets!
We decided to buy some bits from the market and come home for lunch, and we enjoyed the beans, burrata and rare roast beef slices with fresh rolls and the rest of the tomatoes etc that we had already. Afterwards we put in some time researching where else to visit and wrote ourselves an itinerary for the afternoon. Fortified with lunch and some cups of tea we set out again with more purpose and started by walking through the old ghetto area, with its even narrower lanes, and on to the University where we couldn’t get on today’s tour but will book for another day. From there we walked up to the Scrovegni chapel and enjoyed an hour first in the Eremitani museum whilst we waited for our visit slot. Amazing Roman exhibits, with lots of glass objects which were incredible to see, and many domestic objects that look so similar to ones we could buy today…beautifully crafted and we could just imagine being used for so many meals so long ago. Upstairs were some beautiful religious paintings and statues…interesting to see some faces that were very modern and others which were much more of their time.
The chapel itself was stunning…..Giotto’s frescoes were so human, with tender expressions between some and genuine horror from others in the hell scenes. We traced the story around the walls (having seen a useful video beforehand) and marvelled at the scale of it all. Stunning!
From there we went to see the original Roman bridge (strangely it looked newer than some others!), and the tower that Galileo used as a makeshift observatory, then on to a very local and typical bar for aperitivi. Good to sit down and relax over a drink, but we couldn’t eat there as it was fully booked so we headed home and stopped at a little pasta place where we had tagliatelle with white rags of guinea fowl, and a baked aubergine with feta and mint….tasty! There were a few spots of rain just before we ate but it soon stopped so overall we’ve had a beautiful day, and having walked 8 miles we were pretty whacked by the time we got home. Tea and started watching The Bear which we managed to find in English on the TV.