Florence, Firenze

On our way back we decide to do a stop over in Firenze as our car problems had cost us valuable days. Our trip to Roma and Pompeii will now have to wait until next time so we decided to sneak a quick look around Firenze as a consolation.

Again without much idea of what we were doing we booked into a cabin in a camping park in a small village called Fiesole which is 9 km out of Firenze. This is a hilltop village with great views over Florence even from our cabin. It is an ancient village older than Florence with its own Roman Theatre and archaeological site- a great place to stay near Florence. The English have been coming to Fiesole since the 1800s, even Queen Victoria.

Next day we purchased a 24 hour ticket on a tourist bus (open topped double decker) that took us from Fiesole to Florence. It was a hop on hop off affair with English audio -a great way to get to Florence and do a tour and back to Fiesole. We visited the Duomo and climbed the tower, 440 steps, and the Archaeological Museum with great Egyptian and Etruscan exhibits.

The Duomo

Day 2 in Florence we caught the ordinary bus in and visited Palace Pitti and the Uffizi Gallery. The latter was phenomenal however very busy with tourists. We had reserved tickets the day before which made getting in a lot easier but still a squeeze of people. The Uffizi is an ancient art gallery dating from 1600’s with good examples of Raphael, Botticelli, Titan, Goya, some Leonardo da Vinci and many others. A lot of the art was donated by the last member of the Medici family on the condition that it never leaves Florence.

Ponte vecchio