Off to Firenze.
So here we are. We arrived in Florence and we’re sitting outside the Duomo. The queues are horrendous. There are more queues than you can shake a stick at and we have an hour to kill before going to see the David, where again there is a large queue
We’ve just seen our friends from Essex and they wandered off towards the river, hopefully to find somewhere where there aren’t so many people
After a wonderful coffee we left the square where the Duomo is and walked to the museum which holds the original David. I haven’t been there for many years and only remembered seeing the statues. I was amazed when eventually we got inside at how big it was and how much more there was to see that I just don’t remember the statue itself of David is five metres high and was completed by Michelangelo when he was twenty-six. It took him several years. He was 22 or 23 when he started it. He got a piece of scrap marble that was left in the grounds of the Duomo and asked permission if he could carve something out of it. Out of it came the David. More than 5 tonnes of glorious marble nudity.
After about an hour we felt we’d seen enough paintings of the Madonna and Jesus and John the Baptist. Really the original purpose was to see the David, which we’d more than done, and I’ll add photos after this.
We then left the museum and walked back to the Duomo, past the Duomo and on to the Ponte Vecchio, where Val had originally bought a necklace some how many years ago? 10 years ago. We found the original shop and earrings to go with the original necklace were offered at €170 the bridge itself was originally full of butchers and fishmongers but now it’s full of extremely expensive jewellers, brand names and things that we couldn’t possibly consider spending money on. Having walked across the bridge, we found a nice little cafe where we’re sitting now. We found Moretti beer at €7 a bottle so here we are in the sun enjoying ourselves. Now I’ll add pictures.
In 1593 Ferdinando I introduced a law that banned all businesses involved in the vile arts . He couldn’t stand the smell when he was walking along the raised corridor across the bridge so he banned all meat and fish mangers and only jewellers have been allowed there since. The bridge was built in 1345 after the collapse of an earlier 10th-century bridge. This was the only Florentine bridge to survive the Nazi bombings of 1944.
After a very nice beer we elected to have affogato with pistachio ice cream. It’s something we’ve always felt the best we had was in Norwich from our local gelateria, the owners of which were from the west coast of northern Italy. I have to say this affogato was superb and a very very close contender. A little bit expensive but hey ho, you’re only in Florence once in God knows how many years
On leaving the café, we decided to walk along the river to view the Ponte Vecchio from a distance. We took some pictures, and then Val asked to walk to a particular square where the copy of the David is standing outside the Medici Palace, which happens to be closed on Thursday. We had a wander around there and then wandered on a bit further and found ourselves in a square full of stalls from guess where, Normandy and Provence, with beer, tartiflette, potato, Provençal raclette cheese, wine, etc.
After our beer, sitting in a very warm, nay hot, square, we set off for the main railway station to head back to our hotel, which is about an hour away. The station is absolutely heaving. It’s nothing like I remember it 50 years ago but hey ho, things change
This train was difficult to find. We had platform 4, which was down an alleyway and across a platform, and we were told several times we couldn’t go down there. Eventually we found the train and it’s pretty full . Infact it’s crammed.
Val and Peter Ball are ....... 