Saturday, April 14. Raining hard and v cold. Set off late with L and S first to Medici-Riccardi Palace where chapel with frescoes of Magi quite stunning. Perhaps most striking thing I have seen. Also grand baroque staterooms of conventional and boring kind. Exterior masonry on Via Cavour quite cyclopean in scale and rusticated within an inch of its life. Crossed to Ultr'arno by a bridge below Ponte Vecchio - river yellow with mud from week of rain. Past crime scene with police tape and lots of municipal police in their white firemen's helmets and a body wrapped in gold-coloured plastic to a trattoria just off Santo Spirito square. For me, pasta with a dish of tripes - good, but oversalted. Later to more frescoes, and finally Palazzo Vecchio, which I had wanted to see because it is such a striking building. Cheap umbrella bought in Sydney had more or less given up by this time - many others discarded in the street. Two observations of the day, probably obvious to everyone except me - It ragazzo = Fr garçon, which of course = OE wræcca; 'waffle' is a Low German diminutive of 'wafer'. Finally bused home opposite a trio of sweet American girls who must have been staying at Settignano. But why would you stay at Settignano, one wonders. Arrived back just as vigil mass was coming out in Chiesa San Martino a Mensola downstairs. Just as it has, I suppose, every Saturday evening since C9.