The walk to St. James is about two miles, but there are a boat load of espresso bars along the way. I like the idea of adding that simple word “bar” to the descriptor of these establishments. Your would be surprised at the number of people in professional attire stop by to have a shot of Fernet to their shot of espresso. Anyway, as I warned you, I am starting to collect street art. This piece of art seems to be a collaborative effort.
This church is on the way to St James and is named Santa Maria Novella. It is called Novella because it was built on the site of a 9th century church (theOratory) in 1221 and was the new church at that site. The Duomo started construction in 1412, so it was never the Novella in Florence. Back to being careful when naming things that sound like “the one”, “the only”, the Titanic or you decide …
This is also the church featured in the Dan Brown novels. You can still see the pendulum that hangs from the top of the dome and swings to measure the rotation of the earth. There is also a brass bar embedded into the floor that is the result of a daily tracking of where the sun shines onto the floor a little hole high in the south wall of the church. This information changed the calendar by 11 days. I may be exaggerating but I do not think so. We have a rule on the street I live on that if the story you are telling has at least 10% truth then anyone listening has to bite their tongue. For example the day I had 3 holes in one. I did play golf that day so sit down and listen to my story.
let’s see, where was I going? To church!! First of all church starts at a civilized hour of 11:00 am over here. Much appreciated by me. I had been in touch with the priest in the last few weeks and had made arrangements to attend a Lay Eucharistic Minister (LEM) training he was putting on after service. It was a great training. It will not work out for me to serve as a LEM at St James this trip, but it will be a goal of mine in the coming years. My good friend John Brown will tell you I am now certified to take the cross from the back of the church to the front, if I can find my way. It is good to have people around who will keep you humble. In any event there will be a piece of paper hanging on the wall at St James, in Florence, Italy with my name on it, saying I served as a LEM from October 9, 2022 until the other number catches up with me.
On one of my trips I made the bold statement that Italian soup is so good is because they use the proper spoon to consume it. I even brought home 12 well-aged soup spoons for us to use at home. I keep finding them in the back of the silverware drawer however.
The proper spoon in use. by the way some one else left the glass of wine on my table. I would never have wine before like 3 or 4, maybe 1 or 2, but absolutely not before 11. As you can see I diluted the wine with water.