The next day we got up early, with the vague intention of beating the queues. Bus to Pisa, a rather slow train to Florence, and then into the tourist information at the station to pick up a better map.
No map, as the queue was horrible, but a stunning realisation. Patti Smith was playing live that night, in Piazza Santa Croce. Wow! That required a radical rethink. We set off via the central market for breakfast, and got waylaid by scads of beautiful leather objects. But eventually we discovered that yes, she was playing, yes there were tickets, and yes we could find a reasonable hotel room. So we got all that sorted - the two tickets costing us less than �'�30! The hotel room (plus clean knickers and toothbrushes) cost rather more, but hey! It saved on train fares and was a one-off opportunity.
We wandered around the lovely streets for a while, including taking this pic of the classic down-river view from the Ponte Vecchio. We also discovered that in the summer months, the Accademia opens for free for two hours on Thursday evenings, from 1900. That was a major bonus. We reacquainted ourselves with the immortal David and the heroic, unfinished Slaves.
The Accademia was also hosting a retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe, the American photographer who was so controversial. When you see his (less sexually explicit work) alongside Michelangelo, you can see how he was occupied with many of the same challenges, about form and shape and movement.
His famous picture of Patti Smith was there, together with a very odd film of her. It was ingenious and long-range planning to bring them together in Florence at the same time, or sheer luck. Certainly Smith knew about it because she referenced Mapplethorpe on stage that night.