March 24, 2023 - Cable Guy

We had decided that today we would a day of rest since both of us are stiff and sore from our uphill hike yesterday. Also, the cable technician was coming at 8:30 and we didn’t know if it would be like at home when they give you a time slot and show up 2 hours later. It wasn’t the case, at 8:15 the doorbell rang (we had practiced yesterday on how to unlock the outside door from the apartment so that we wouldn’t have to go down the 30 steps). There were 2 technicians and neither spoke anything except Italian. The first thing they did was apologized since they thought they went to the wrong appartement. One of them went and knocked at the door of another apartment before we could ask him if they were here for Francesco (the owner of the apartment). He said yes and started apologizing to the lady of the second apartment and suddenly gave her a big hug. We presumed that they knew each other. It was quite the experience trying to understand each other even though he knew we couldn’t understand, he was talking to us a mile a minute. I tried my app but he was taking so fast that even the app couldn’t keep up. Anyway, the tv now works. I understood enough to grasp that tomorrow is a special day. It is the day the Florentines celebrate the new year. March 25^th. There will be a parade at 3 so will hang around town to watch it. It will start not too far from here.

We went to the market to buy more strawberries. The ones from the market are tastier than the ones from the fruit and vegetable stores. We also bought some pecorino cheese with the peppers in it. In the afternoon we wanted to ask about the New year. We had understood that it was a free museum day. They were closed until 3 for a union meeting so we decided to go have a look at the street where our 1^st apartment would have been. We are happy with our choice; it would not have been any closer to the places we wanted to go.

After supper we decided to take the bus to Michelangelo Piazza to see the city lighted up. We wanted to talk some more night pictures of the city. We stayed for a while then hopped on the bus that should have taken us back near our street. All the way down the sign was lit that read ‘deviato’. We realized what it meant when the bus crossed the river and drove a ways then stopped. The bus driver said this is the last stop. Instead of stopping 100 meters from our apartment, we were 1 km away. Jacques knew where we were so we had no problem finding our way home. So, our day to rest our legs was not to be. We walked another 17.5 km.