The beauty of Basilica di Santo Spirito in the Oltrarno district of Florence was inspiring in its simplicity. Located across the Arno River from the historic area of Florence, the area is filled with wonderful restaurants and workshops where carpenters are carving wood ornamentation or restoring antique furniture. We found a wonderful Trattoria with freshly-made pasta and ate a wonderful lunch with the Standly’s who are traveling with us right now. We then saw the fantastic Brancacci Chapel with the frescoed walls depicting the life of Saint Peter begun by Masolino and Masaccio and completed by Lippi. It’s all Greek to me also, but the paintings speak for themselves.

When you travel with others, you let each person’s abilities shine for the good of the whole. I like to be in charge, Kathy likes to organize, Melisa likes to execute, and Randy likes to think about what he is good at, so we appointed him the engineer/fix-it man. His first big task, self-appointed I might add, was to try to figure out how the ever-changing colors of the candle worked that way. That’s the candle I purchased in Seville and Kathy snuck to Florence. So far, every experiment he has run on the candle has proven false. We are going to the Uffizi Gallery tomorrow and Randy said he thought the mesmerizing colors of the candle would rival any painting by Botticelli or Fra Angelico
or Titian or Raphael or Da Vinci or Ghiberti or Lippi or Caravaggio or any of the great painters of the Renaissance. Such is the power of that Spanish candle. WEG