This will be my last posting from Frenzy and hope to be able to find an internet in that wicked city of Venice.







There are three major reasons to return to Firenze...if you are me. One is to see the Michelangelo Staircase and Library at San Lorenzo. It has been closed for years and just reopened to the public on the 16th. Two, is to rest my eyes once again on the wonderful Italiante profile of Lorenzo, our Landlord; and three is to have Florentine grilled steak at Sostanzas, via del Porceliana.

Of course, there are other reasons too, such as - on our way to Sostanza'a we stopped in Santa Trinita and POW POW POW POW one after another were Annunciations. Paintings, frescoes, tondos, fragments, everything. A Tosini, 1570; Jacopo di Empoli, 1603; Lorenzo Monaco, 1424; Bicci Di Lorenzo, and a famous Neri Di Bicci, 1475. I was allowed to take photos.




One last word about Annunciations....The special chapel in the Basilica Annunziata is a wondrous sight of many hanging glittering lanterns of different sizes and candles glistening off silver decorations in a very dark space not unlike something you could find in the hidden home of the Beast in Beauty and the Beast....or was that in Phantom of the Opera? And in this chapel is an Annunciation which, the story goes, miraculously painted itself after the artist gave up on task.

Dear Readers....I hope I haven't been too politically incorrect.

Tomorrow we leave this Theatre of Piety and head for the hedonism of Venice.



* More on Badia...
From what Penny could interpret, the frescoes in that Orange clositer have to do with the monks refusing to pay their taxes. There's one frescoe of a crumpled down building with bloody bady parts of monks. I guess that was their punishment. We did go back the next afternoon so I could get of photo of the Annunciation. Found we could go upstairs to the cloister balcony. Got a photo of the teeny orange tree heavy laden with teeny oranges. We could hardly find our way into the church this time since that main door was locked. Wandered around and down some narrow alley and found the side entrance.