Travel Tuesday

Florence, the centre of the art world, the home of the Renaissance, a beautiful city.

We arrived in Florence and went up to the Piazalle Michaelangelo, which is where you get the best view of the city. This is where we had our Contiki group photo taken. It is an amazing view as you can see the whole of Florence down below you, the bridges (like Ponte Vecchio) over the river Arno, the Duomo, which is the big Cathedral in Florence and the whole beautiful city. After that we drove down to the coach stop and walked into town. The streets are very old and narrow here so big busses aren't allowed into the city centre.

Florence is the home of art, it is also where Michaelangelo's famous David statue is. The David is inside one of the many museums but there are exact replica's of him all over the city. We went into the main square where we saw one replica outside the museum. This square was amazing as it contained tons of other very famous statues as well.

Florence has been a powerhouse in European history and is well know for it's beautiful jewellery and well crafted leather. We went to a leather factory and saw a demonstration of how they make their famous leather jewellery boxes. Although they are made from leather they are as hard and solid as wood. At this shop we also saw the famous Florentine puzzle-ring. By this point in the tour we hadn't been spending too much money so we had a little extra spending money here and we were ready to shop. I decided I wanted to buy a leather satchel and a puzzle-ring. I bought the 4 band puzzle ring at Walter's Gold and Silver shop and then spent most of the day looking for a satchel to my liking. The puzzle ring comes with a thin metal band around it to keep the four bands together, you can wear it with this band but it isn't really practical so I eventually took it off...now I just have to be SUPER careful every time I take it off so that it doesn't fall apart. There are videos on Youtube about how to put it back together again (like this one), but it still looks pretty complicated to me. I was going to take it apart and take photos of it for this post but I wear it every day and I'm too scared I wont be able to put it back together again.

Thinking about it now, it's rather funny that in the art capital of the world we decided to shop, but I suppose that's what a holiday is all about. My sister was on such a huge shopping spree that we decided to split up for the day - I still wanted to see SOME cultural things in this amazing city. I spent the day with one of the other girls on the tour who was also keen to see some cultural things. We first went to see the Duomo, it is very beautiful and unique. The entire façade is made up of different coloured marble and is breathtakingly beautiful. From the Cathedral we went to Ponte Vecchio, which is a very famous bridge in Florence. There are tons of very fancy, very expensive jewellery shops across this bridge. We decided to rather just have a look at the bridge rather than go into any of those shops.

We met up with some more of our group at the bridge who were all finishing off some amazing looking waffles with Nutella all over them. I decided I wanted one too so we went back to the shop they had got them from. I ordered my waffle and when I got to the till I was told it cost 8€! Needless to say I ended up paying for it and only eating half of it, I also managed to smear Nutella all over my camera at some point during this process. After my waffle experience I eventually found a little leather market and found a satchel that I really liked. I bought it and now carry a little piece of Florence with me every day.

We were lucky enough to have a wine-tasting here as well. Italy is famous for it's wines and I must admit I was a bit skeptical about the wine tasting, seeing as though we also have lots of famous wine back here at home. But really...I can't compare. We were lucky enough to taste a red wine made from a 200 year old vine. The farm only produces 200 bottles from this vine every year and the owner of the shop we were doing the tasting in buys them all. The taste was amazingly earthy and rich (I'm not a wine connoisseur so those are the words I'm going to use), I don't even want to imagine how much a bottle of it costs! We bought a bottle of wine for my Dad here - not one of the 200€ bottles, but still good I imagine.

That evening, after we had spent ALL the money that we possibly could, we went for a massive dinner. The Italians lived up to their reputation once again, bringing out plates and plates of food accompanied by huge bottles of wine. This was definitely the best meal of the trip culinary wise - not really the best dinner party with friends though. Somehow our little group of friends got into the restaurant last and got split up over four tables. So I ended up sitting with random people from our tour but it was all good in the end, I got to meet some of the other people and make some other friends.

After dinner we merrily, very merrily after all the wine, made our way to the Space Electronic Discoteque - a karaoke club. I love karaoke, but sometimes it's not the best idea, it might be to me...but for the poor people around me who have to listen to it, it's not. Anyway it was lots of fun and another great night went down in the books.

Florence is somewhere I would really like to go back to, perhaps to do some more shopping, but mainly to go and see all the amazing art and culture it has to offer...that I completely missed this time around. Oh well...it gives me a good reason to go back!