New challenges...

Today we started, somewhat late, with breakfast. Well, it is Sunday… The people sitting behind me were involved in a fascinating and somewhat highbrow debate over whether ‘A Beautiful Mind’ was better than ‘The Hobbit’ and in what sense both could be considered art. We just looked at everybody’s legs for signs of as many mosquito bites as we have…

We spent the day walking… and walking… and walking… About 5 hours in total. No, we didn’t get lost (well, not much) we just ‘did’ the Barberini museum and gardens, and the Boboli gardens – very uphill, but lovely views of Florence. We passed all sorts of useful shops too – for cycling, running and even a whole shop dedicated to strapping up muscles when you’ve done the cycling and running. Florence is absolutely stuffed full of people – apparently there’s a volleyball tournament going on, and the place is packed. Who’d have thought volleyball would be so popular? There’s a gym at our hotel, so I could go and do gym-type things, if I knew what they were. I had thought about running in Florence, but it is so crowded I’d have to get up very early to run anywhere, and it is meant to be a holiday. So there won’t be any photos of me running gracefully (?) past the statue of David, or the Duomo, or the Ponte Vecchio (which, incidentally, is entirely filled with totally hideous bling which nobody could ever possibly want to buy, except they do). The lack of running will mean I have only two weeks to get back in shape for the Mud Race when we’re home again. It can be done. It will have to be done… And, on the plus side, I am doing my knee exercises every day.

And we’ve set ourselves a new challenge for the week: Ice-cream each day in place of lunch, but we’re not allowed to repeat the same flavour. We started quietly enough yesterday with ‘nut’ and ‘fig’ (Guy) and ‘chocolate biscuit’ (me). Then we got rather over-excited today and had ‘melon’, ‘coffee’ and ‘tiramisu’ (Guy) and ‘forest fruits’, ‘pistachio’ and ‘chocolate flake’ (me). We may have blown the entire ‘not repeating the flavours’ thing in one fell swoop…

And there are two specialist chocolate shops within a 100 yard dash of the hotel.

I’ll diet when I get home….