Somehow, I managed not to set the alarm on my phone last night and we ended up sleeping until gone 9am this morning. This was problematic as we were supposed to be going on a guided walking tour of the city at 10am and had a half-hour journey to meet the tour. After ten minutes walking in the wrong direction, a rapid taxi ride set us right and we were only a few minutes late at the rendezvous, managing to pick up some breakfast basics from a café nearby before the tour set off.
It turned out that the guides had been told we wanted a three-hour tour of the city and hadn’t been told that we had a rehearsal afterwards when we had been told we’d have a two-hour tour and hence plenty of time for lunch before the rehearsal call. Inevitably this discrepancy didn’t become apparent until late in the tour and some of the guys were actually quite stroppy with the guides, as if it were their fault they’d been given bad information.
The rehearsal itself was quite tedious and in a hideous theatre. We polished and tweaked our music but were very grateful when it was all over.
In the evening we had to attend a civic reception in the Town Hall. It wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as I’d expected; about half-an-hour of speeches in two languages followed by a substantial buffet and drinks. Being the LGMC, we did our civic duty and completely cleared the tables of food and wine.
When the Town Hall kicked us out, we wandered en masse towards the café section of town. Some of the group were just in search of alcohol, but some of us wanted dessert and coffee before beer. In the end we spent a good thirty minutes trudging around before we finally were led to an Ice Cream Parlour on the Via Po. There we had lots and lots of alfresco ice cream, much of it laced with various liqueurs in the Italian fashion. I followed mine up with a gorgeous cup of hot chocolate, also done the Italian way; a rich, thick dark chocolate drink with the consistency of syrup, but nowhere near as sweet.
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