Flouncing Around Florence

We took a train in to Florence on Sunday and left the hire car at one of the Cortona stations. We parked in a blue-bordered spot right next to the station. I went up to the parking ticket machine to work out how to get the ticket, but the locals gathered hanging around on the street said "no, no, no... vacanze." Nothing on the signage said anything about which days, but I figured they'd know and I trusted them. There's always that creeping feeling that perhaps the locals might like to play jokes on foreigners like me. I was picturing one of them ringing up his brother-in-law, the parking inspector, and saying, "Get your stuff down to the stazione. We just fooled another bloody tourist."

We had company for this day trip. David and Jill (other wedding guests) were staying in Camuchia in a resort a couple of km from any station. David had lost his wallet in Paris and couldn't get a hire car without his license. They were good company.

We grabbed a "Florence Focus" hop-on-hop-off tour bus in Florence. I think this was run by Half-Assed Tours Inc. Some of the ear buds for the audio guide had 1 metre cables. Apparently they were long enough for the upper deck seats, but down below where we were, you had to stay bent forward in your seat to get the plug in. I took the two short cabled earphones back to the tour guide, but she could only replace one of them with a long one, claiming they didn't have enough long ones.

The audio material was also frustrating. After passing one stop, the audio guide then told us all about Galileo's lab up on the hill. According to the map (which just labelled the stops and didn't give any detail about what was there), we needed to get off at the previous stop to get to that one. *sigh*

We did get off at the lookout stop where a large bronze statue of David looks out over Florence. However, you've all seen pictures of David before, so I won't bore you with photos of a bronzed naked muscular body.

It truly is a beautiful city.

The lamp posts look like they need someone to clean up after them.

We stopped off by the river for coffee, and then headed for the centre of town - to the cathedral.

The cathedral: ornate on the outside, a bit dull within.

At first glance - a clock? No. It's for roulette on Thursday nights. Ask that saint on the left.

Who? Me?

Lyn wasn't feeling well, so we headed back to the station at a slow walk and left David and Jill to explore more around that part of town.

You'll be pleased to know that we got no parking fines. Seems nobody inspects parking on Sundays.