Sunday 9th October - Florence

Today we caught an early bus into Florence.  Although it’s Sunday, the bus was almost full of local workers going into the city.  The bus was dirty inside, the seat backs were covered in graffiti and several of them were broken, notably the one that Angela sat in which had a broken back that flipped backwards and forwards when we went over a bump or if the brakes were applied suddenly.  The journey took around forty minutes and wound around the Tuscan hills and through picturesque villages.  As the early morning mist cleared, there were lovely views on the way to Florence.

Once we reached the centre of Florence we stopped for coffee at a café at the front of a hotel very close to the Duomo, Cafe Astra Al Duomo.  We had lovely coffees and pastries with excellent, five star service.   It looked expensive but everything was actually very reasonably priced. We’d highly recommend this as a good place for coffee and/or lunch. Our batteries were recharged by the quiet interior and the shear civility of the service.  (Don’t be put off by the load music outside.)

          Triumphal arch, Piazza della Repubblica

We knew the Duomo was big, but still the physical size and shear magnificence of it took our breath away.  The coloured marble exterior is simply spectacular.  There was still room to move around when we first arrived at 10am but, as you can see below, even forty-five minutes later it had started to fill up, and this on a Sunday morning when the Duomo is closed to tourists.

         

at 10:00                                                                                                        at 10:45

                     Around Florence Cathedral (Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore or more commonly Il Duomo di Firenze)

         

We spotted these two cool dude dogs keeping an eye on the Duomo from the windows of a first floor record shop.

                     

                   Our two favourite dogs                                          Outside the Uffizi  gallery                                                          

There are lots of things to love about Italy and we hope we have enthused about a good number of them on our travels, but there are also few things that could take a bit of work.  One of these is the formal recognition of queue jumping.  There are signs everywhere advertising “skip the queue”, “jump the queue” and we could see no reason why this was a good idea for anyone.  As we are visiting many cities that are acknowledged to be the most beautiful in Europe, if not the world, we expect them to be extremely popular and that we’ll have to queue to see the sites.  For example, the Uffizi Gallery is home to the Medici family’s private art collection, bequeathed on the condition that it never leaves Rome, so where else are you going to see it?  We expect to queue.  But outside the Uffizi there are two queues, the ‘normal’ queue where you pay the usual entrance fee of €17.50 per person (includes a shared audio guide) and the “skip the line/jump the queue” queue next to it where you pay the usual entrance fee plus anything from €20 to €40 euros on top to have a guided tour.  They take more people from this second queue than they do from the first, so it moves much more quickly, although people may well wait for a hour in this queue too, even at those prices.  Wouldn’t it be fairer to just have one queue where people go into the gallery in the order that they joined the queue?  Simples.

Having queued for a little over two hours, we finally gained entrance to the gallery.  The art works are, of course, stunning but we foolishly imagined we’d stand in silent reverence in front of the paintings, with time to consider each one. In truth we were crowded into rooms where two or three tour guide commentaries might be going on around us simultaneously making it impossible to think clearly.  It was a shame but we were actually relieved to get out of there.

On a happier note, we ended our visit to the Ufffizi by having a snack lunch on the gallery’s rooftop terrace café.  We had two small beers, two toasted sandwiches and two glasses of tap water for €26.  We considered it well worth it to have lunch on the terrace where the Medici family congregated to watch events in the Piazza della Signoria.

         

                                                                             Uffizi gallery’s rooftop café

         

                                                                         Views of the Arno River in Florence

         
                                                                                             The Ponte Vecchio

  

                             View across the river

         

                                                                     Street views in Florence

                 Even busier on our way home – 5pm

Florence is absolutely beautiful and consequently extremely popular and crowded.  We spent the rest of the day walking the streets and taking in the sights before getting the evening bus home.  The bus flew around the Tuscan hills at break-neck speed but at least it was too dark to see how close to the edge we were!

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