We ate breakfast at the hotel today, our hotel offered complementary breakfast but we havn’t been able to take advantage of it the past two days since we had to leave so early.  After a meal of scrambled eggs, bread and some coffee, we headed into town to see the tallest teenager in the world, Michangelo’s David.  I had pre purchased tickets from the Accademia website so that we wouldn’t have to wait in line.  The reservation is for 8:30 so we hurried over, we were one of the first people in line.  When we got there we read on a piece of paper tacked on the door that the staff was having a meeting and won’t be opening the museum until 9:30.  Apparently they didn’t mind selling tickets for times before they opened.  We waited outside with a bunch of other tourists and tour groups, some with 8:15 reservations. As we waited, the street vendors came out of nowhere, the men selling posters, the women selling scarves.  One of the ladies in a tour group behind us was taking pictures of her group when one of the scarf lady walked up to her and waved her fist at the tourist, she then said something unfriendly things I’m sure.  It turns out that another scarf lady was in the midst of the tourists and didn’t appreciate having pictures taken of her illegally selling in the streets.  A few minutes later two cops strolled by and the vendors scattered, well, only to return 20 minutes later.When the museum finally opened, we told the guy at the door that we didn’t bring our reservation email, he went back inside and brought out a list of reservations.  He looked for our names, but couldn’t find it.  Without the reservation he wouldn’t let us in because we were in the reservation line.  I suppose we’d have to go back and get it.  Heading back, we took our time and went shopping for souvenirs.  By the time we came back it was almost 11.  The line was gone by then, I guess there wouldn’t have been a need to pre-purchase the tickets after all. 

We went up to the counter and the ticket guy told us that our reservation wasn’t valid! Seems like the website that sold the ticket wasn’t legit.  It’s a good thing I bought the ticket with American Express, they’re usually really good with getting money back for fraud. 

Well we bought the tickets and went on in.  The main attraction was the David of course, so when we got in we found some chairs, sat and started at his front for a while and then moved to the back to stare at his rump for another while.

After lunch we wandered around for a bit and ended up at the Dodges Palace.  We explored the rooms, admiring painting of people we didn’t know.  We then took a short cuppachino break to rest our feet before going into the garden.

The garden was quite vast.  I can’t say it was spectacular but it was quite relaxing. We stayed a few hours at the garden, looking at the view, taking pictures and admiring the vastness of this private garden.  The view of the city was very nice from here so we decided not to go to Michangelo’s Plaza which would require a bus ride up the hill.  Retiring back into the city center, we went looking for dinner.

We ended up at the pasta and pizza chain, Pizzarito.  We had eaten here when in Rome and enjoyed the fresh pasta they offered.  Since we were starving, we got greedy and ordered 2 pastas and a pizza… ultimately I couldn’t finish my meal and had to take a doggy bag.