Friday 9 October Santo Spirito

This morning I walked to the Santo Spirito area on the other side of the river , about 3 km from here. I pottered around the piazza in front of the church, then went inside. It dates back to about 1250, but Brunelleschi ( an architect who I like, fairly simple but nicely proportioned buildings) redid the inside in 1435. But 100 or so years later someone added a construction that looks like a mini copy of the church in the bit between the 2 transects. The guide book calls this bit a fancy Baroque  baldacchino.  Google tells me that a baldicchino is a covering over the altar. This particular baldicchino was held up by its own mini pillars and looked out of place to me. In this church they did not charge you but said you could not take photos.

Then  i pottered around some streets in the area. Many narrow ones with sqatter older apartment blocks, all sorts of different small shops mixed in the dwelling units. There was a fancier street with mostly fancy things for your home. But  i shop was unusual. I spent a while looking in the window and could see nothing other than dog collars for sale. There were several models of dogss, no cats, from which I deduce that these collars were only for dogs.

Then i crossed the river and found myself in an area of very fancy ,,very high- end  designer shops. With quite obscene prices.. I hurried along,  felt hungry, tried a few laneways away  from the major road,  no luck, kept walking, found a place that looked quite full, but said they had space for me. After waiting for ages for a menu, the head man was obviously ignoring me, finally someone else gave me a menu, I waited ages more,  i tried to get the head man's attention but he contiñued to look past me, so after a while I walked out. I have never done that before. They was a nearby table of elderly women who were watching me. As I got up one of them stood up to get the  guy's attention.  T,hat was nice, that they tried. I thanked them, but there was no way I was going to sit down again.  So a bit later on I found another place that was lovely. I was treated with respect and enjoyed watching the waiter deal expertly / flirt with a group of Serbian woman at the same time as attend to  other tables. 

I stopped to look at the yarn in a 'wool'  shop. There are all sorts of different combinations of yarns that we do not see in Australia. But I miss timed the day and by the time I got to my local market it was closed.