Second Day in Florence

Sounds like we started our day in a much more stable manner than all of you in the South Island!! Glad to hear that there were no serious casualties and that things are underway to restore services to the Christchurch area.

Had another hot day (sorry shouldn't keep saying this when you have been experiencing cold weather) but not always sure that it is a blessing. When we get to Venice later in the week it is predicted to be in the mid to high 30s!!! - seems like a recipe for steam to me. Think Rome tomorrow will be about 28. Its lovely to have the sun but it is also a drain when you are in the heat all day.

Forgot to mention yesterday that both here and at the Cinque Terre, we came across lots of padlocks attached to fences, bridges, railings etc which reportedly symbolise everlasting love. The practice is for a couple to attach the lock somewhere and throw the key into the water symbolising that their love is unbroken. This is not officially sanctioned and people can be fined if caught because it causes pollution with the high density of keys, however, it still continues.

Today we walked almost non-stop for 8 hours and started at the Uffizi Gallery at 9.30 am (but this involved a 20 minute walk to get there). I am not at all knowledgeable about art but was pretty impressed by the collection they have and the museum itself. The ceilings are either ornate or painted with frescoes and the number of huge paintings just goes from room to room. We took about 3 hours going right round the collection and a short break trying to find each other (lol) but we now have a fairly well established routine so can pretty much predict where we will eventually cross paths again. The Carravaggio exhibition didn't actually have a lot of his own works but included a number of artists that he had directly influenced and they were all pretty similar (although somewhat gruesome as a number depicted people being killed or decapitated!). We then headed back to the streets and David did his climb up the Duomo Tower (463 steps allegedly) while I did more looking round the markets. Didn't buy much though. We then went to the Museum where the original "David" by Michelangelo is housed but decided not to join the queues and just wandered around the general area taking in the sights (such as the street artists and performers e.g. Da Vinci pushing round a rubbish cart). We then joined the bustle of St Maria Novella train station to get our tickets for tomorrow and did very well considering the ticket seller didn't speak much english and you know the extent of our Italian! Being organised with printed train schedules and highlighted sections helped enormously.

Bythis time we had been on our feet for 8 hours so decided to head home as we have a reasonably early start tomorrow to catch the train to Rome (and still have to work out how to get to the station by bus). We are not taking any luggage with us so the laptop gets a rest night tomorrow (unless we have wifi access in Rome in which case it will just be a written update) so next blog might be a couple of days away.

Overall impression of Florence - have enjoyed our visit here, has negatives like many of the big European cities we have seen (graffiti on lots of the buildings - even the historic ones/drain smells/crowded with tourists/plethora of souvenier stands) and the drivers here are all over the place (particularly the scooters) but its also interesting.