Week Notes 24#11

A lovely first week in Florence and Rome - ahead of my 30th birthday on Sunday:

• A very early flight (waking up at 0400 😵 - and glad we had a good buffer as the roads + satnav were a little confusing - but glad to have arrived in Rome in good time, and able to take the train to Florence and then have some time that day, instead of rushing there late, if we'd had gone via East Midlands
  • Was a bit hard to keep my eyes open on the plane, and not exactly the best or easiest sleep, but that can be expected
  • Bought - and tried to read - From Project to Profit but it looks like the Kindle version I bought wasn't actually a Kindle book, but was more like a PDF? But luckily I could read it on my phone (franticly trying to download it quickly before the flight left!), and it was a great read, and got me thinking about making DMD a product
• Was nice to get the train from the airport to Roma Termini station, and then on to Florence
  • When we got to Rome, we went to the Mercato Centrale at Roma Termini - which I'd forgotten was there, but we saw some good pizza places near the station and one was very close, so thought we'd got there - which was very good, and a very 😋 start to the holiday
• Had a pretty chilled week, enjoying being in a good location in Florence, with some very good cafes and restaurants nearby and we had a lovely apartment that allowed us to chill
  • Quite literally chill as it was rather cooler in Florence than we had packed for, and it's not like it was the warmest time of the year 🙃
• Went to the Uffuzi gallery, and walked around with the Rick Steves audioguide, which was good, and there was some great art
• Went to see Michaelangelo's David - rather bigger than I'd expected!
• Had some really great food, and recharged after it being fairly busy since the beginning of the year
• Spent a lot of time enjoying spotting local cute dogs 🐶
  • Including the cutest little sausage dog that was carrying round a bear 🥺 and when crossing the road, they put the bear down, then picked it up to walk it across the road 🥰
• Walked a tonne - 111,000 steps! Compared to a more normal week of ~50,000, and definitely not in the right shoes 🫣
• Some great memes and chatter about Kate Middleton, and the rumour mill, which has kept me busy (including drawing me back to Twitter a little, in read-only mode)
  • I'm not a Royalist, but do love some drama
• Spent some time fleshing out - with pen and paper! - what sort of features that a hosted plan for dependency-management-data could require
  • Some prompting from From Project to Profit as well as some recent considerations about what sort of things would be needed / wanted, especially as I find it can be useful to have things out of my brain
• Was the fourth anniversary of the start of COVID becoming a real concern in the UK - especially reviewing my week notes from that week - and wild that things are still ongoing, but mostly ignored by folks
• Then we travelled back to Rome for my birthday weekend
  • We stayed in the very fancy Anantara Palazzo Naiadi - entering the next decade in true style - and we even got an upgrade to a suite, which was even fancier than the fancy room we'd planned to be in 😄
• On Friday we met Mum and Dad and had a coffee at the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, then went for 🍕 at Pizzeria Da Baffetto
  • When we got to Rome, we went to the Mercato at Roma Termini again, and made sure we tried some of the other food options we'd not had before
  • Was quite a queue! But was good 😋 and a good recommendation from my cousins
• Saturday we celebrated my birthday meal - as on Sunday, my actual birthday, it was likely to be hard to get out to dinner
  • We went to I Sofà Bar & Restaurant - which unfortunately didn't have the rooftop open, but luckily we had a lovely rooftop bar at our hotel that we had a drink at before dinner
  • The restaurant was nice and we had a relaxed three-course meal and I got a lovely birthday pudding
• Earlier in the day, we went to the Domus Aurea, which was very cool, and had a really interesting VR visualisation at the end of what it likely would have looked to, which was really quite amazing, especially after being so deep underground and realising that no, it was able to view the majesty of the capital
• On Sunday, we had a relaxed start to the day, more relaxed than had planned to be
  • There was the Rome marathon which scuppered our plans to get a bus - to avoid walking cause our Uffuzi, as Rick Steves put it, were very sore - and ended up finally getting one (after waiting for a while outside our nearest bus stop, and then being bounced around at Roma Termini) we ended up being diverted across the city, and I was getting a little concerned we were going a different route 😅
• We also went to St Peter's Basilica - which was as incredible as last time - and there was a service there while we were in there, but didn't think the pope was there
• Noticed Spotify on Android's been a bit slow and buggy recently which has been a little frustrating
• Was nice to have had a tablet with us, for watching TV and checking out the many options for things to do and places to eat
• Was a lovely first week, and a great way to celebrate my birthday and to have my parents there, and a shame that Cat wasn't able to join us

Watched:

• Rick and Morty
• Modern Family
  • Finished the series, with a good and nice ending for everyone
  • And then have been re-watching from season 1, as we didn't want to move on yet, and it's been nice seeing a number of threads that were closed in the final season!