The life and times of:: Florence

Florence...the cradle of the Renaissance...also the birthplace of the gelato. We spent a few nights here on our journey south and got a bit of culture. FREE TOURS!! they are awesome. The hostel we were staying at had two free tours over successive days , I think they were given by an art history major because she was very interested in giving us the details of particular palaces and their different styles etc. It was great! She was also quite usefeul, because as a local she knew the best gelateries in the city. The first place was awesome and we went there about twice a day after that. My favourite flavour might possibly be pannacotta, but too hard to choose between that and pistachio I think. You can ask to have panna (cream) on top, to make it more energy intensive and therefore sustaining for long days spent wandering round.

I should like to add that Florence is also the city of naked marble bottoms. We were confronted with them everywhere. The most impressive was an enormous bottom of Neptune, I think at the piazza della signoria. It rose from the square like a giant moon, drawing us forward...

This was my favourite statue in the piazza. Three figures from one block! And of course, three bottoms to admire..

We went to a costume section in the Pitti museum, which had the burial clothes of Cosimo (ruler of Florence, 1500ish) and his wife and son. Incredible that they were able to preserve what they did. They could even tell that the wife had been dressed in a hurry (they were worried about infection) because one of her stockings were inside out and the bodice wasn't laced properly. It was very cool.

Florence is the biggest Italian city that we had stayed in and we were both impressed that it has a petty relaxed feel about it. Despite tourists wandering across roads without looking, in streams, the motorists seem to put up with them quite patiently. I didn't hear any honking which was surprising.

Our last day in Florence and it was Daniel's birthday!! We decided to celebrate with food. We had the most awesome awesome panini, and had to go back for another. We were making our way to the gelato place and came across a wee chocolate shop, so had to sample (the chili chocolate was HOT!! plus cinnamon chocolate is great and I wonder how I can make that at home...?). At the gelato place we had discovered that they also sell it by the kg, so we were weighing up whether we could eat a box of it without a) it melting, and b) feeling awful. We decided to play it safe (it would have melted quickly because the day was pretty hot) and got a few flavours, intending to get some more, and some more. Alas! we couldn't! The paninis took their toll.

Anyway..some pictures:

The walls of our hostel were covered in grafitti. We found a few NZers have been before (actually we met a few there too). Daniel left his mark to let everyone know it was his birthday

Most of the impressive marble facades were actually put on when Firenze was capital of Italy in the 1800s sometime. The dome at the back is the massive duomo, nobody knows how exactly how it was constructed, the architect didn't leave any plans...rude...
and I don't think that tower in on such a lean like it looks like in the photo

The old bridge, the only one that wasn't bombed. There is a corridor along the top so that the rich fellows didn't have to mix with the common folk when crossing the river