Florence and Siena

May 3 - Day 49

After being foiled by a public holiday and then a lack of parking spaces, we finally made it to Florence on our third attempt. The bus ride took just over an hour to reach Florence's autostazione. We arrived at 10 o clock and had a walk around the Florence streets, which are all very narrow for some reason with the footpaths having only enough room to fit one and a half people side by side.

 

Passing through several of Florence's piazzas, we made our way to some of the city's main attractions. Turns out that Florence has a higher concentration of tourists than even Paris or Barcelona because everywhere was packed and the lines to get into buildings to buy tickets were longer than the buildings themselves.

 

We tried queueing for the Galeria del Academia where Michelangelo's David is kept. However, after standing in line for 20 minutes without making any progress, we decided to skip that and try the Uffuzi Gallery instead. This turned out to be even worse, having not one but three really long lines for tickets. At least the oustide of the Uffuzi was quite interesting, with statues of various artists standing between the columns and and small open air exhibition.

 

Next we went to check out the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge crossing Florence's river. You can't really tell it's a bridge while standing on it as the view of the river is almost completely obstructed by a row of jeweller's shops which run the whole way across the bridge.

This was all on the way to the Boboli Gardens, our next stop. We had to pay 10 euros each to enter the garden but it wasn't crowded at all. In fact, there was hardly anyone there. This was presumably because the gardens can't really compare to Florence's other attractions. It does have two museums though: one concerned with the fashion of the women who lived in the palace during the 17th and 18th centuries (I don't actually know if that was what it was about) and another about porcelain. Riveting stuff. The garden itself was very nice though and offered a very good view of the city.

We had lunch at a riverside restaurant, which for me was very delicious (bacon covered steak with deep fried vegetables) but decidedly average for dad (fish). Still, it was pleasant eating by the river on such a nice day.

After, we walked back through the city in search of the univsersity, which apparently has some sort of thing. We couldn't find it though, and also couldn't think of anything else to do. Florence seems like the kind of place that you can only properly enjoy if you have a lot of time to stand around in queues. So we went back to the station and caught the bus back to Siena.

 

May 4 - Day 50

 

Today we went back into Siena to properly do some tourist-ing. We checked out the cathdral which was very impressive and the panorama of the city which was also very impressive.

The museum was pretty okay, the crypt and battistero (whatever that is) were okay too I guess.

At lunchtime, we went in search of a restaurant called Zest which was recommended to my dad by Trip Advisor. We were served by an English waiter there and had a very nice pasta lunch.

And yeah. I think that was pretty much it.