Florence

This cruising is definitely not for sissies, it’s darn hard work.  I guess not too many people would sympathize with this sentiment but it’s not all relaxing by the pool you know.  For the last 5 days it’s been wake up by 5.30 & ready by 6.30am for a full day of walking & touring in the blazing hot sun, come back exhausted then sit up half the night writing about how much fun we’ve had and sorting the 200 photos taken for the day.  If I don’t write straight away I get too far behind and as one day is rolling into another I get mixed up if we’ve just seen Italy or France or Spain or just what the heck we have done.

I’m not the only one confused I’m please to say.  After having conversations with others they seemed just as confused.  Our dinner companions, whom we hadn’t see for several days due to so many port stops was telling us what they saw but were mixing up what was seen in which port.  The conversation went something like how lovely the Colosseum was in Naples and did you see the buried village in Venice.  One woman was heard to exclaim how they went to see the Leaning Tower of David!  It is a bit like that. 

With so little time in each port and so much to see it’s almost impossible to choose what sights to go to so you try for a bit of each.  This ends up not so satisfactory as you rush up to one sight and say ‘ooh look at that’ then dash off to see the next one and gasp in awe, take a snapshot or two then hare off to see something else.  You spend most of the day travelling to fit it all in and it’s no wonder you are all in a muddle by the end of the day.

Anyhow, I now have three to write about as I didn’t do the work every night like I vowed to so now have to spend this day at sea on the computer to pay for it, with just a quick break for bingo & lunch of course.

Now where were we, was it Florence in France or Cannes in Italy? I’ll start with Florence.

The closet port for a day trip to Florence is Livorno, Italy’s third largest seaport.  We had read there isn’t much to see here so no point in hanging around. I would have to say tho that it does have a rather magnificent sculpture on the waterfront of a 10 meter tall sailor kissing his sweetheart in that classic dipped pose, his arm under her neck as she tips backwards, it the tallest statue I think I have ever seen.  

There was a dilemma over what to see, do we go to Florence for the day or to Pisa. Having been to neither before we of course wanted to do both but unless we took a tour off the ship which costs a fortune & includes an hour long lunch we prefer to do it ourselves and choose one. 

We hoped off the ship and was about to set out for the train station when we saw an 8 seater taxi on the wharf advertising a day trip for 400 euros.  Initially we thought that expensive but they took you into Florence, a trip of approx an hour, then took you to Pisa about ¾ hour away then back to the ship.  Divided by 8 it was only 50 euro p/p, a darn sight cheaper than what the ship was offering. After a team discussion we decided that the 5 of us (Maureen, Roger, Jo & us) would take it while Ellen went to breakfast with an Italian friend & met up with us later.  The driver found another couple willing to do the trip and agreed to the lesser price of 350 Euro so we were all happy and set off for the day.

We arrived in Florence by 8am, nice & early to start our frenetic sightseeing.  Of course you cannot do Florence justice in that time but we would do what we could.  The first stop was to see the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore or more commonly known as the Duomo.  This cathedral is far more beautiful on the outside than it is on the inside, which is rather plain in comparison.  It was built in 15th century during the Renaissance period over a course of 14 years & paid for entirely by the cloth makers guild.  The facade is incredible, decorated with multi coloured marble and absolutely impossible to take a photo that does it any justice at all.  It is famous for the huge dome that a bloke called Brunlleschi designed and built.  Not only did he have to design the dome but he had to figure out how to put this massive structure high in the air to top the cathedral so he designed these cranes that could jack it up there.  The methods for this dome was later copied for St Peters in Rome & St Paul’s in London. 

Next to this is the Baptistery, a round building or maybe it was octagonal with white & green marble, very simple but effective in looks. It predates the Cathedral by approx 300 years. It has spectacular doors made up of bronze panels with scenes from the bible.  They were so detailed & required a bit of study to take it all in.  They were done by a guy called Lorenzo Ghiberti and Michelangelo thought they were so beautiful he named them the Gates of Paradise.

Also here is Giotto’s Campanileor Bell tower. All three of these buildings seemed to match and blend in perfectly with each other and really had the WOW factor.  So after we had wowed here we set off for the leather markets not far away.  In fact most of the sights of Florence were not far from each other, most of it is pedestrianized  so it makes it a very easy walking city but you definitely need more time than 5 hours to see it, especially if you have to queue for 2 ½ hours just to see the original David who is housed in a building called the Accademia.

Instead of culture we chose not to line up for hours but to poke our noses into the markets.  I wouldn’t say they were cheap but the leather products were fantastic.  I could easily buy a leather handbag, made of the softest leather you have ever felt, for every day of the week & one for every night and a couple more just for good luck.  The jackets were of stunning designs, not like your old, every day sort of leather jacket, these were unusual & beautiful.  Then there are millions of leather wallets, key rings, small purses and numerous other products that were all so tempting to buy given the money & luggage allowance I would have had the lot.  This place is every shopaholics dream, even if you didn’t like shopping there was something to buy for the unconverted.

Also here was another indoor market of fresh fruit, meat & deli products.  By this time I had lost everyone so was wandering around on my own wondering if they would ever find me again.  Then I saw the deli selling wonderful looking porchetta & my worries disappeared.  I thought I would surprise Jon with porchetta for lunch should I ever find him again so I bought a pile of it.  Back out in the leather market I almost tripped over him as he was gazing with glazed eyes at all the leather (not sure if he was trying to find me a present) holding in his hand a plastic bag that was identical to mine. He had also found the porchetta and now we had enough to last for the entire trip should we not get sick of it by then.

Florence is a particularly stunning city laden with paintings & sculptures from the renown masters such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Rubens, Rembrandt, Donatello, Cellini, da Vinci to name but a few & there are many more that you may not of even heard of but masters all the same. With all this wealth of culture, Jonathan was particularly taken with a rather rotund, short, uniform several sizes to small for her and fairly rough to boot, policewoman wearing a very stupid looking white hat.  He insisted I take a photo of her to remind himself how lucky he is.

Think she has been eating too much from the picture above

We were all meant to meet up again with Ellen under the Statue of David (this was just a copy in the square - if you have been reading this properly you would know the real one you have to queue & pay to see)  at 11am.  We thought it would be more appropriate to meet at half past as that’s the time David was pointing at but we were over ruled by the spoilsports. 

Sorry about the side on pics but can't figure out how to turn them around, besides look skinny here

Jon Enjoying? his lunch

After a quick catch up we again wandered away to see the Ponte Vecchio which is a 14th century bridge spanning the river that runs through Florence.  This bridge is lined with gold & silver shops as it has been for centuries, some dating back to the Renaissance, such beautiful jewellery all glittering in the sun. 

We were hungry by now so we called into a supermarket, bought some bread rolls and a bottle of Chianti, since this was the region it came from and sat on some pigeon poo encrusted steps to feast on porchetta rolls washed down by Chianti, yum.

Thus fortified we went back to the leather markets to buy a leather bag of course and saw of couple more statues and wow things before racing back to our pick up point and drive to Pisa.

I’m so pleased we got to go here as we would have missed out if we had just caught the train.  We were told there was not much there except the tower and we have seen lots of towers on a lean before, they are all over Venice for a start, so there didn’t seem much point in going.  If you ever get the chance to go to Pisa you really must as it’s more than just a tower that leans.  To begin with it’s a very beautiful tower that leans.  What we were also not prepared for is the equally beautiful Cathedral & Baptistery all gathered together around “the Field of Miracles”.  These buildings are so ornate and each one is a miracle in themselves. I don’t think they ever get a mention when Pisa is talked about.  It is said that Galileo, born in Pisa, used the Cathedral to study movement of the pendulum and the leaning tower to work out the laws of gravity & acceleration.

At certain angles it hardly looks like the Campanile or Bell tower which is the one that leans, is leaning at all.  It just looks normal but if you walk around it there is no doubt that this is not how it is meant to be.  The tower is now inclined to 14 feet on one side and many of the original pillars have had to be replaced due to the strain they have been put under so there are different coloured pillars on every level.

All around this field are hundreds of cheesy souvenir shops selling everything to do with the leaning tower.  There are wonky cups and leaning glasses as well as T Shirts, caps, bags, ornaments and anything else you could possibly think of that can be sold to tourists as a memento of their visit. There were also lots of people in the classic posses of pretending to hold up the tower or the Atlas pose of it on their back while their friends stood back to get the perfect shot.  There were cries of ’up a bit, no no down a bit, move to the left, move to the right, up a bit more, that’s it - now hold’.  I wonder what it is that makes people do that?