Florence

We arrived in Florence on the train, had a good trip in comfortable 1st class. When we got into the station Steve informed me that it was my turn to buy the next ticket to Rome.
Great, the line was a mile long! You really have to have your wits about you or you can lose your spot. I got to the front of the line after about half an hour. The woman behind me who had been trying to get in front of me started yelling at me in Italian, she was yelling and pointing so I presumed she meant there was a space at the counter but I couldn't see any spaces, so she just pushed passed me and ran up to the counter where a woman was still putting her stuff in her bag and looked back at me and pointing as if I was stupid. She looked so angry, bit scary, so i just waited for the next window. Welcome to Florence!!

When we got outside it was easy to get a taxi and we went straight to the hotel. We were really happy with our room, firstly it was air conditioned, secondly it had a balcony and a view over the river and if we stretched we could see the Ponte Vecchio and thirdly it was a large room with a huge bathroom.

After settling in we went for a bit of walk and ended up in the Piazza della Signoria, which is where my sister, Donna, got married. We took a few photo's of the area and the reproduction of Michaelangelo's David and decided to come back for dinner as there were lots of cafe's. It ended up being the best meal we've had in Italy, so far.

We are getting a bit slower now, taking our time and just doing a little bit of site seeing and a bit of shopping. It's getting much hotter and not much fun battling against the crowds and basically seeing more of the same. The next day we just went for a walk to the Galleria dell 'Accademia see the real 'David' which was still amazing even tho we had seen the repro's and lots of photos. There was also a photo exhibition by Robert Mapplethorpe which I really enjoyed but Steve couldn't see what the fuss was about.

The following day, our last day in Florence was spent walking around the town but not really enjoying it anymore and then back to the hotel where we could sit in comfort and watch people go by as we had cold drinks on the balcony. It rained that night and cooled everything down which was nice.

Our first day was spent taking a walk down to the Piazza della Signoria and then walking across the Ponte Vecchio and then up to Piazzale Michaelangelo which overlooks Florence. Took us quite a while to walk up the hill in the heat but we made it and took lots of photo's and bought a really cold drink. We walked back down again and back to the hotel room and aircon!