First Day in Florence

We arrived in Florence in the early afternoon, and immediately set off for our hotel.

Tom was overjoyed to find more free water along the way.

 

Once we had dropped our bags at our hotel, we set out to explore Florence for the firs time. Right near our hotel was a lovely big park, where we sat and enjoyed some of our last Tuscan strawberries.

We started approaching sightseeing in Florence the same way we had in Rome – identifying the various sights on our tourist map, and then planning to walk from one to the next. At the first, we stumbled across a celebration of the police force’s 150^th anniversary!

I don’t think these police vehicles would command very much respect back home in Australia.

We then made our way to the Duomo, which was unmistakeable.

 

Across from the Duomo itself is the little baptistery. It was separated because you couldn’t enter the Duomo unless you were baptised, so of course you had to be baptised in a separate building. The baptistery has some pretty spectacular doors. These are replicas, and the originals are in a museum.

The doors were apparently quite revolutionary when they were made, because they were the first attempt at depicting perspective on a relatively two-dimensional surface. You can see the arches of the building graduating backwards by being made smaller.

We then continued our wanderings, and found a few more fun shop windows as we went.

Well when I say windows… we couldn’t actually help but go inside this shop…

As we passed down one dark street, I was stopped in my tracks by this sight. It’s two ordinary buildings side by side at first glance, but then I realised that the façade of the building on the left was covered in beautiful frescoes! No barricades to stop people from touching them, no sign explaining the history of the building. Just very old frescoes. Amazing.

Next stop on our sight-seeing mission was this place. On the steps in front was a massive group of people dressed in green, white and red T-shirts, reciting something in Italian. We eventually managed to figure out that it was to do with a celebration of the anniversary of Italy’s unification. A lot of celebrations that day in Florence!

Old stone streets are so beautiful in the afternoon light.

And then we found the river!

The Ponte Vecchio bridge is probably prettier from afar in the afternoon light. It’s not that attractive in the harsh light of day, really.

This was our first encounter with the many many locks in Florence.

This is one of the beautiful buildings on the other side of the river from the main centre of Florence.

And yet another intriguing shop/restaurant window.

We then went to see the Ponte Vecchio up close, and discovered many many more locks. Someone told us that they were supposed to be a romantic gesture – put a lock on a monument and you’ll stay together forever. We never actually got it clarified for certain.

And then we were treated to yet another gorgeous Italian sunset, looking across to another of the bridges.

Afterwards, we continued our sightseeing mission on the other side of the river. Tom hoped to replicate this guy’s pose without making another hole in his pants.

 

We then went on dinner-finding mission. Like we had in previous cities, we wandered around searching for options, but this time found our choices quite limited. We finally came across a little square that seemed very popular with locals, and sat down in a cosy little restaurant with relief. First course? Gnocchi.

Second? A Florentine steak. Apparently a local specialty. In reality, a T-bone steak cooked very nicely, but in all honesty, not really that spectacular. Tom was still pretty excited about making a change to our primarily vegetarian Italian diet thus far.

He still made short work of it, too.

We then made our way back towards the river, to cross back again.

And found yet another lock.

This is the Medici palace.

Outside of which are replicas of a lot of very famous statues.

Most notably, a replica of Michelangelo’s David, the original of which is in a museum, but was first put exactly where this replica now is, on one side of the door to the palace.

There’s a very ornate fountain nearby.

And inside, a beautiful little courtyard.

That was our first few hours in Florence. We hadn’t really got our bearings yet, so were stumbling across things as we went. We got ourselves a bit more organised over the next few days, and made sure we saw everything we wanted to. Much more to come!