Sunday morning in Firenze

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 Marco Polo's diary! 1392. Beautifully neat handwriting. A+ for Marco.

Dante's church of the lovelorn - baskets of letters asking for his intervention in hopeless love.

My 'hood on the Oltrano - the left bank. My hotel is tucked in behind the trees.

Be still my beating heart. More gelato - today, chocolate mousse (too sweet) and limon - perfect. A gelato a day keeps ... Bethy happy.

Across the Arno. All those ugly buildings and the sky way too blue.

In the Bargello museum of sculpture - a palace full of many naked men (uncircumcised) -

- and beautiful Madonnas. This one by Donatello, particularly protective and moving.

Gay Donatello's particularly fey David, with flowery hat, long curls, limp wrist and very big sword.

"Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be." See all the lost souls under her cloak?

Here we are.

Santa Maria Novella.

Lunch - foccacia and Obama in Cuba. (A poem?)

Across the Arno from my hotel

The Florence half marathon - overseen by David

Local musicians come out to play for the finish

Thrilling - you can't see them, the frontrunners from Kenya, except for their lime green shoes, they went by so fast. After looking at all those stunning bodies in marble, here were stunning bodies in ebony - divine running machines, many minutes ahead of their human rivals.