OK…wednesday in Firenze.
In our hotel room, there are three sets of doors to the balcony. On the outside are wooden doors with glass inlaid that open outward, then wooden shutters that slide, then on the inside wooden doors with glass inlaid, but the glass part has a wooden cover over it which you can open and close. if you do close all of these doors it is reasonably quiet, and also very dark.
So when we woke up this morning we were kind of surprised to find that it was 9.20am. Luckily breakfast is available until 10.00am so that was a close call. After breakfast we did some of our excess washing and hung it on the balcony, wrote some more travel diaries, picked out which photos to post on the website, organised when we were going to meet Lisa and what she wanted to do, and therefore when we’d be doing things like the Uffizi that we wanted to do. Also we looked out the window at Firenze a lot.
After finding an internet cafe and getting our computer to join the network properly (which it wouldn’t do in Rome), we could finally post everything, download email, check our (dwindling) bank balance, and catch up on important sports results.
I wanted to have a look at the area over the other side of the station (looking for the bits of Firenze where Hannibal was filmed) but didn’t find it, and also we went looking for the Mercato Centrale (Central Market) but it had just closed, so we bought yet more gelato and sauntered around. Food in general is slightly more expensive here in Florence, but not so much as to be a problem.
At that point we had plans of walking to the Uffizi and then up to the Galleria dell’Accademia to reserve tickets to both, having discovered that the ‘booking’ website only sends an email with your details in it; not much good if you have one hour in an internet cafe and are waiting for them to email you back. We got as far as the Ponte Santa Trinita and were just stunned by the setting sun and the bridges laid out down the river and the colourful Florentine buildings, so we stayed on the bridge for a while soaking in the breeze and generally loving life.
Walking back through town we discovered the Duomo lit up by the sunset and spent at least an hour looking at all the details in the carvings and statues all around the outside of the church. It’s nice to have one of the world’s more photogenic objects basically at your mercy.
Dinner was a buffet of what was referred to as Florentine staples, e.g. barley salad, cous cous, potatoes baked with rosemary, roasted zucchini/eggplant/capsicum and fresh fruit, with a drink of choice (in our case two glasses of Red wine) all enjoyed at a sidewalk table for the acceptable price of 7.50 each. At the hotel we discovered that the bum community outside the hotel was now very loud and happy about something (obviously we missed the drop-off) and I watched the end of a pointless 2-all draw between Italy and Austria on the TV.
Greg
