Arno You’d Love Florence

Let me apologise in advance for using terms like “awe-inspiring”, “phenomenal” “staggering”, “mind-blowing”, etc., to excess but that’s how Florence affects you.

From one frenetic railway station to another: Santa Lucia station in Venice was crazily busy when we left that beautiful city at 11.30am and travelled south, through Padua (Padova), Bologna and onto Florence’s Santa Maria Novella station which was also a madhouse. I’d Googled the hotel we were booked into and found that it’s only 3 minutes walk from the station, which was wonderful because it was terribly hot and the streets of Florence seemed grimy and the traffic oppressive after the pedestrian heaven of Venice. Our hotel is what many people would call “quaint”. It’s on the 4th floor of an old building and you get to it via one of those ancient elevators that fit only four people and is enclosed in a steel mesh with a visible counterweight. There’s also a stairwell that’s narrow and precipitous when you look down from the 4th floor. The hotel itself has a semi-Rococo vibe to it, with floral wallpaper in the hallways and candelabras adorning the walls. We don't have towels but, rather, large tea-towels, to dry ourselves after a shower! This takes a little getting used to.

None of the staff at our hotel speak much English at all, which is surprising because it seems almost every other Italian we’ve met so far has been quite adept at the language; it’s extraordinary how adept the average Italian is, more so than the French. It makes it difficult to gain a modicum of skill at a language when most people you interact with speak English at a much higher standard than you could hope to attain in their lingo during your short stay. Still, it’s great fun attempting to communicate in Italian because it’s such an expressive and flamboyant tongue, with all those lengthened vowels. English really is the lingua franca - and please forgive that bad joke I just made - of the 21st century.
There is an amazing amount of wondrous sights within easy walking distance of our hotel. Just across the street is the church of Santa Maria Novella, with its beautiful and capacious piazza and a little further east are the Medici Chapels, with a large dome and only a little bit further on from there is the stupendous Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral with Brunelleschi’s massive dome, The Duomo and Giotto’s steep bell tower, the Campanile. It’s staggering when you first see these buildings!

The Duomo close up


The Duomo and Giotto’s Tower from across the Arno River


The front of Santa Maria del Fiore


Giotto tower

We had tickets for a hop-on hop-off bus tour of Florence so away we went through the streets in the blazing sun on top of an open double-decker with commentary provided via headphones. The bus takes you up to the Piazzale Michelangelo, which affords a spectacular view over the city:

We jumped on another bus that took us to the beautiful little town of Fiesole, which is even higher up and gives you an awe-inspiring view of the Tuscan landscape.
In the evening we strolled further from The Duomo down to the Piazza Della Signoria, where the replica of Michelangelo’s David stands:

Then we passed the Uffizi and walked towards the Ponte Vecchio:

This city is stupendously wonderful, and makes Venice seem intimate by comparison. There’s so much more to explore and we spent most of the second day in the Uffizi gallery, which has a collection that just keeps blowing your mind as you move from room to room. We thought we were fit after walking scores of kilometres in Venice but that flat city’s only hills are its little bridges and we found ourselves panting after scaling the steps that lead to the Uffizi’s magnificent collection. While you’re still getting your breath back you enter a phenomenally beautiful corridor, like a less ostentatious hall of mirrors at Versailles.
The Uffizi is a world in itself so we’ll visit again tomorrow. Today, we’re hopping on a train to see Siena.