Florence Part II
Trip Start
Aug 11, 2009
1
20
21
Trip End
Dec 16, 2009
Florence,
Tuscany,
Italy
Sunday, November 8, 2009
It is Sunday evening and I'm back in Norwich. It has been a very quiet weekend compared to my trip to Florence. Thursday night was Guy Fawkes night, so I saw lots of fireworks going off on the way back from Gatwick airport. You don't need a licence to buy fireworks here so everybody seems to have them! It has actually been a really beautiful day here today. Very cold, but crisp and still. The sun is just starting to set now (at 4:20pm in the afternoon!!!) and the sky is soft pinks and purples. Very pretty.
Anyway, Florence. So I had a nice dinner that night after I wrote my blog. I ended up going to a restaurant just down the street from my hotel. It was packed out and there were two women waiting for a table in front of me. A table for four became available and the waiter asked if we minded all sitting together
A rather famous architectural blunder...
. They seemed happy enough with that, so I agreed. They turned out to be really lovely. They were Dutch, but spoke English perfectly (of course!). Plus one of the women had lived in Italy for nearly fifty years, so she spoke Italian and helped me with the menu. The food was good, though the dessert rather disappointing as it was clearly store bought and not homemade (pear and chocolate tart, but not very chocolatey, or pear-y for that matter).The next morning I got up feairly early and walked to the Uffizi to be there for my 9:15am booking. I probably didn't really need one actually, as there was hardly any line. I think that doing Italy in November would be my tip for anyone who is really interested in seeing the art there. It is cold, but all the galleries are a nice temperature. The advantage is that there are a lot less tourists. This means hardly any queues. Plus once you actually get inside the gallery there are a lot less people to elbow out of the way in order to see the artworks properly. I mean, I like to be able to get up close to some artworks and then to stand well back and have a good look at them. You can't always do this if there are swarms of people crowding in front of each work. Especially the very famous/popular ones. And in the Uffizi there are ridiculously famous artworks in every room! It is insane how much amazing art they have in there!
I have visited the Uffizi before, when I was ten, but I don't really remember it at all, so it was like seeing everything for the first time. It was funny actually, the only thing I remembered was when I went down to the toilets, which are underground. I got down there and suddenly I remembered being there before, with mum and Caroline. The queue for the ladies had been huge and then, when we finally got a cubicle, we discovered they were those funny toilets which are basically like a flushing hole in the ground that you have to squat over
The Duomo in Florence
. I remembered being shocked by that when I was little. So this time I opened the toilet door with trepidation, but am pleased to report that the toilet facilities have since been updated and are very nice now.After the Uffizi I grabbed some lunch and then headed over the Ponte Vecchio to the other side of the river. This bridge is the most famous in Florence, it's on all the postcards. Every shop on the bridge is a jewellers, so you can imagine I spent some time oggling the store windows on that bridge! From there it was a short walk to the Palazzo Pitti, which is an old Medici family palace. There are about seven or eight galleries/museums inside this one palace. There are two different tickets, depending on which galleries you want to see. I wasn't sure, but opted for the cheaper ticket. I'm really glad I did, because this was the ticket that covered the Custome Gallery. They had an excellent display of costumes and accessories from the 1800s to 1980s. Some amazing stuff in there! Plus the rooms they are housed in are amazing - it must have been a truly beautiful place to live when the Medicis lived there.
After that I had more gelati (I ate A LOT of gelati!) at Vivoli, which is another famous gelaterie. I had dark chocolate, bannana and caramelised pear. So good!
That was about it really. The next morning I went to the markets to pick up a few things, bought some postcards and then jumped on a train back to Pisa Airport. Of course my flight was delayed again, this time by an hour and a half. On the plus side, I felt a little sick during the bus trip home, but was not actually sick. Plus I had the pretty fireworks going on outside to distract me
The view from my bedroom window
. I'm planning a trip to visit my freind Lis in Lyon in a few weeks time, but apart from that I think I'll just hit up London for some shopping before term ends and it's time to come home! It's crazy how fast it has gone!
xox Hannah
