Saturday and Sunday

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On Saturday, those of us who arrived early to spend a couple of days in Florence, spent the whole day wandering the city. Some of us went to the Ufizzi palace and museum, Marjorie and I went to the Museo Novecento of Modern Art, We spent a good part of our day trying to understand our GPS. These winding and criss-crossing streets play havoc with the GPS. We spent a lot of time back-tracking and walking in circles, trying to figure out what the GPS was telling us to do. When we finally got back to our rooms, I crashed for several hours, catching up on lost sleep from the last few days of travel, forgetting that I was supposed to pick up solvent at an art supply store for the oil painters in class on Monday. Tomorrow would be Sunday. All the art supply stores would be closed.

Dinner reservations for 14 people at 7:00 across town. A harrowing taxi ride through twisting, winding, narrow cobblestone roads, somehow avoiding multiple rear-end collisions and murdering pedestrians all over the road. All workshop participants met together for the first time, taking up 3 tables. Wonderful fresh pasta dishes, way too much food, plenty of wine.








Sunday.

Our last day at Hotel Bernini. Beth, Pam and I left the hotel early to see if any art supply stores might be open. Nope. All closed until Monday. We made it back in time to check out of the hotel, catch a cab to the train station to meet up with Scott and John, the guys from Il Chiostro, who will be managing our group. All 14 of us crammed our large and heavy suitcases full of art supplies, easels, canvases and paper into 3 vans. We rode one and a half hours up narrow, steep, curly, hair-pin roads to Casa al Vento, our home for the week.

We are waaaay up a mountain top, with dizzying views of the hills and vineyards below us. We are in the middle of nowhere, maybe 40 minutes to the nearest town with a hardware store. In lieu of a solvent, we have decided to try a concoction of linseed oil, maybe olive oil, maybe alcohol to try to use as a paint thinner, until we can get our hands on some mineral spirits or turpentine. We will try to paint tomorrow morning with our concoction. If successful, we’ll paint the whole day. If not, we’lll go to Sienna tomorrow in search of an art supply store..

We are having internet connections here. That's why my blog posts aren't getting to you. Hoping this changes soon.


Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 17, 2025 at 3:48 PM

    Gorgeous pictures! I’m sure they don’t do it justice. I hope your concoction works!

    ReplyDelete

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