This morning we visited the Academia Museum. It’s claim to fame is “David”, which is absolutely spectacular. It’s second claim to fame is that has more religious art than any other place in Italy except the Vatican. Unfortunately, most of that is mediocre. The third reason to visit the Academia is their musical exhibit. They have some really weird stuff.l Here’s an instrument that Benny Goodman never played.

Rick and Suzy decided to spit off and spend some time exploring and shopping. We wanted to visit the Duomo. We needed tickets, the ticket office had a small museum. I was all museumed out. I had an espresso while Danita visited the museum. An hour later, I called her to make sure she was OK. It was all fine. I was comfortably in the shade, people watching. I found this family amusing. They stopped their bikes in front of me and discussed something for quite a long time. One could always tell which person was talking by seeing who was waving their hands.

Like the major church in Pisa, the Duomo has four buildings: church, baptistery, bell tower, and baptistery. The major difference is size. Plus the Duomo buildings are level. The line to get into the church was incredibly long and we heard the inside of the church was plain. So we skipped that. The church’s dome is the famous Brunelleschi’s Dome, which is actually two domes (one inside and a second one outside). It is famous mostly because everybody said it would fall down. They may well be right, but it hasn’t fallen so far.

Of course we had to climb the bell tower. And we visited the baptistery. The building that surprised me was the baptistery. A yurt is a 6- or 8-sided building, usually with canvas walls. It has a roof, a floor, and not much of anything else. Today I learned that a baptistery is basically a yurt with stone walls. There is a small alter. And the ceiling is beautifully painted. But that’s it. It’s basically an empty 6-sided building.

Tomorrow is a travel day. It’s also a race against time. Our train is scheduled to arrive in Venice at 1:35. At 2:40, they pull the water taxis to make room for the annual regatta. If the train is too late, we’ll be carrying suitcases up and down those all-so-quaint “inverted-V” bridges.

Here’s some more pics of our day.