Firenze - and a farewell to Tuscany

Wednesday 21^st May

Today we headed to Firenze (Florence), a couple of hours drive away. The first part of the drive was easy using a motorway (one we had been up and down 3 times already and the road is one of their cr*ppy ones) then the autostrade, followed by another major motorway. The last motorway was carrying a lot of trucks so required a lot of concentration to keep the flow going.

We arrived at our hotel around 1, checked in, got the lo-down on how to get to Firenze, and headed for the bus. The hotel advertised a short walk to the bus but I reckon it was at least 800 metres. The bus ride took 30 minutes and found us at the station in the centre of Florence.

The main sites we visited today were the Cathedral, Piazza della Signoria, loggia de Lanzi and the Ponte Vecchio. I don’t know what I expected from the Ponte Vecchio but I thought it looked pretty seedy and needed a good spit and polish. The shops along the Ponte are all jewellery stores. There were a lot of African guys with their bag of ‘splat balls’ and a piece of timber to demonstrate them on. They would stand and throw the balls down on the piece of wood but when they saw the police coming they would quickly pick up their lump of wood and saunter off. Obviously no licence to trade. In the loggia de Lanzi there is an open air showcase of sculptures from the 14^th to 16^th centuries – this was free.

The cathedral in Florence

The gilded bronze doors on the Baptistry in Florence

The cathedral

The Italians love a uniform
- yet another flavour of police uniform.

Statue in the Piazza della Signoria

Just one of the starues in the loggia

The Ponte Vecchio

We found somewhere to sit on the other side of the Ponte and sat and watched the passing parade. We struck up a conversation with a local man (age 74) who (in Italian with a small spattering of English words) told us about how the government kept taking in African refugees and there was no work and it was not good for the locals, then told us it was quiet at the moment but next week it was school holidays so would be very busy. We didn’t find it quiet – everywhere we turned there were tour groups.

We spent the rest of our day wandering the streets and window shopping – lots of leather to look at. We had a very nice dinner in town before catching the bus back to the hotel. I overheard one American lady who was buying a postcard of Firenze saying 'yes, it is Florence, but they spell it different here'. Had to laugh.

Thursday 22^nd May

No breakfast at our hotel so it was McDonalds for breakfast in the centre of Florence – we’re not going to do that again if we can help it.

The plan for the day was to visit the Galleria degli Uffizzi which houses the world’s greatest collection of Italian renaissance art. There were hundreds of roman statues in the first gallery. Then there were hundreds of paintings. I was hoping to see some variety in topic but nearly all the works were of a religious nature – should have known being in Italy. The only artist names I recognised were Botticelli and Michelangelo – Rob recognised a few more but he studied art history at school. The rooms I enjoyed most were actually the foreign painters works where we got some landscapes and pictures with cows in them!  What is it with these artists – they seem to always have at least one woman in the painting who is half wearing her clothes.

The Ponte Vecchio as seen form the Galleria degli Uffizzi

From here we moved on to the Palazzo Vecchio which has some beautiful decoration at the entrance from the Piazza della Signoria. It was pretty hot in the city so we wandered the streets trying to keep in the shade as we shopped for leather. Objective achieved – I have added to the leather collection.

Part of the ceiling in the Palazzo Vecchio.

More of the Palazzo Vecchio

The Loggia de Lanzi

Our final stop in Florence was the Cappelle Medicee. This is the principal burial place of the Medicee rulers. This place just blew our minds. It gets one or two lines in Lonely Planet but when you step inside the mausoleum it is just stunning. The whole place is marble, 4 or 5 stories high and the colours in the marble are just amazing. There are emblems of the cities in Tuscany made of marble with inlaid mother of pearl, prophry, agate, lapis lazuli and other semi precious stones. We met an Italian lady in there who was keen to explain it all to us – she had no English but with our rudimentary understanding of Italian and a little bit of French we got the story. Sadly no photos were allowed but wonderful memories will stick.

Our one negative with our hotel was there was nowhere to eat within walking distance so reluctantly we hopped in the car and went to the only restaurant we knew of nearby. Surprisingly it was very good and we both enjoyed a lovely dinner.

Friday 23^rd May

We are now at a town called Passignano sul Trasimeno which is in Umbria, but before leaving Tuscany we had one last town to visit – Siena.

Parking was a bit of an issue but with the help of Dora we managed to find somewhere near to the city. Siena is another lovely town with the main feature for us being Piazza del Campo where they run a horse race, Il Palio, once a year around the Piazza. It rained on us in Sienna so we had to buy an umbrella – just after we saw the guy re pricing them. Umbrellas were the hot item this morning. We also visited the Duomo and Baptistry. Both of these had some beautiful painting on the walls and ceilings.

First view of Siena.

Stained glass in the Church de Santa Caterina.

Lovely buildings in the city.

The Piazza del Campo - in the rain.
They remove all the outdoor dining areas and stalls
and the horses run around outside the white pillars
and the crowd stand in the middle. See photo below.

The Duomo in Siena.

Some of the tiling on the floor in the Duomo.
 May be useful for borders on a quilt one day.

Don't know who these heads belong to but there were hundreds of them
in the Duomo.

Just some of the paintings in the Duomo.

Street scene in Siena.

Looking back to the city.

We had lunch in Siena and then headed for Passignano. On the highway we passed one car that was loaded up going on holidays. It was a very small citroen with mum, dad and kids (and probably the dog) in it, the back fully loaded with gear, and the roof piled up about 4 feet with gear and bikes covered with a plastic sheet flapping in the breeze. Don’t think they could have got a spare pair of socks in.

We had dinner tonight in a restaurant by the lake and watched the sun set across the lake. We are here for 2 nights.

While in Florence we found a brochure for a tour which in part reads –

The price does not includes:

Everything that is not included in “the price includes”

Very clear!