Lewis drove us the first half of the way to Florence then I took over and brought us to the "Ostello Europa Villa Camerata". Worst hostel so far. No air conditioning or fans, mosquitos everywhere, hot, stuffy rooms, useless wifi and somehow the showers only ran cold but the taps only ran hot.
Just before sunset we drove to Piazza Michaelangelo, which is a hilltop square with a replice of the statue of David on the south edge of Florence and commands views over the whole city. Watched the sunset over Florence, romantics that we are, which was spectacular then drove down into the city center and found a really nice but not overly priced place called La Spada. You know a place is fancy when it has its own vintage of wine and they give you a free glass on entry while you wait to be seated. Fitting in with the fanciness we had wild boar salami as a starter/experiment, really tasty pasta mains and then were given complementary biscotti and shots of some brandy-esque liquor.
Drove back to hostel about 11 but, even given my previous nights lack of sleep, couldn't sleep due to the heat, mozzies and old snoring American.
Got up, barely rested, at 11 and drove into central Florence to explore. Left Cumu at the free parking at Piazza Michaelangelo then lead the others down and across the bridge to a Piazza which had a huge collection of replicas of cool, famous statues at one end and a big church at the other. From there headed north to Piazza de la Duome, home of the 4th largest church in the world, which was breathtaking in size and the intricacies of its decorations. Line to go in, as all tourist attraction lines are, was massive so we headed on to the Accademia Gallery. The gallery had a really good collection of big religious paintings and a lot of sculptures, primarily by Bartolini, but most famously is the home to Michaelangelo's David, which was surprisingly big (5.17m tall) and astoundingly detailed.
Afternoon was getting on so we wandered our way back through some street markets and then crossed over the river on the "Golden bridge", a really cool bridge which has both sides lined the entire way by nothing but expensive jewelry shops. Had our final Italian dinner at a Pizzeria near the hostel.
This was also the first day Cumu started playing up, slipping when shifting gears, especially when cold and in low gears.
Exhausted, having lost the snoring American, and armed with mosquito repellent we managed to get at least some decent sleep.
Woke up in time to get the complementary but craptastic breakfast, supplemented by a tin of fruit salad from Cumu, then checked out. For all that the hostel was awful, Florence itself is a truly beautiful city, lots of tree lined buildings, very clean, art everywhere. By far my favourite city in Italy although that isn't saying much given that we invented a city rating system just to show how bad we rated both Rome and Napoli.
Drove an hour to Pisa, Cumu occasionally complaining a bit, parked in a "Pam" supermarket, much to our amusement, and walked to the tower. As summed up by Macky: "A monument to Italy's fail, not that we need another after Napoli and Rome". Tower was pretty cool, somewhat brought down by the endless lines of tourists taking photos pretending to be holding up the tower. The church next to the tower is actually, all leaning aside, far more impressive as a structure.
"Pam" supplied our lunch then we got back on the road towards Grenoble, which we had selected as Nice and Marseilles were outrageously expensive, possibly due to our tendency to book at the last minute.
No comments:
Post a Comment