Florence

Train to Gatwick, and then via Meridiana Airlines to Florence, about one and a quarter hours to Firenze (Florence). Short cab ride to our hotel, and we are ready to explore.

Everything is within walking distance, a few hundred metres away we are in a piazza, where, surprise, surprise there are many pizza ristorantes, so we choose one and I have my first genuine “made in Italia” pizze, yes the spelling is correct for pizza.

After lunch we headed to the Accademia Gallery. Used to queueing by now, so waited patiently in the queue. This gallery is famous for the statue of David by Michelangelo. Many other statues and plaster casts of statues, as this is apparently the way a statue is designed, before the final statue is created in marble (or whatever).

We then headed down to the river front and started to take in the local scenery. Many bridges cross the river, and we then noticed a bridge “Ponte Vecchio” that crosses the river and has shops lining each side of it which in the main sold jewellery. This is a well known local landmark.

Ben had consulted his "Lonely Planet" guide and chose a restaurant that was highly regarded, so we searched this out, it was packed and we had a 10-15 minute wait. Our waiter was fantastic and spoke really good english, and was not afraid to recommend wines and tell us about the regions that they came from. All had meals that we enjoyed thoroughly. We had a couple of bottles of Chianti "superior" wines. Three of us had gnocchetti (a smaller sized gnocchi), the best commercial gnocchi I have ever tasted.

Morning of day two we went to del Duomo "the Dome" This is a huge cathedral, with several side chapels, which I didn't realise until we had climbed part way up the 420 plus steps to the viewing area at the top of the dome. There is an area halfway up the dome where you come inside of the dome and can look down into the (ground) floor areas we well as getting a close up view of all of the religious frescoes painted on the ceiling of the dome.

we then decided to head to the Giardino di Barboli which is just across the Ponte Vecchio. This is an amazing Park with many features in the huge gardens. Different themes and also re-creations of some of two of the private gardens unearthed in Pompeii.


After lunch (yes another pizze lunch), we then walked up to one of the highest points closest to the city area to a lookout area the Piazzale Michelanglo which gave us an amazing view overlooking Florence and the surrounding hills and mountains. There is also yet another very old church further up the hillside, there are several tombs here date back the early 1700's.

Once again Ben out did himself and chose another top restaurant. The meals we had paled into insignificance, to the meal that Ben ordered and for which the ristorante is famous for. "Bestecca" which is a huge steak which is a minimum of 1Kg. The legs of meat are actually hanging in the restaurant.

On the last morning we went to the Ufizzi Gallery. This took about an hour in the queue before we got into the museum. Unbelievable, the size of this Gallery from the inside amazed me, as it did not look as large from the outside. We spent about 2 hours exploring and really didn't touch the surface, but I think that we were museum'ed out at this stage. This museum has paintings and works of art by Michelangelo, Botticelli, Giotto, Raffaello & Leonardo da Vinci.

What an enjoyable and unforgettable weekend away with Ben & Anne.

Firenze - comes highly recommended by Win & Ken

P.S. Florence is also renowned for leather goods, check out the leather jacket that Win bought here.