We left Rome early in the morning by train. There was a bit of fog on the hills still, but the fog lifted to reveal some beautiful scenery:
There were fields of sunflowers, past their prime all bowing their heads, ready for harvest of their seeds. When I wasn’t looking out the windows I was getting the next blog post ready, tunnels are very good for that! 🙂
We arrived at our cute little b&b:
It was “A Room with a View”, but not of the Arno! 🙂
The stairwell was again beautiful in marble and wrought iron. I think what amazes me somewhat is that in Wellington this would be unusual and amazing, but here, this is commonplace and normal! This wasn’t a fancy building.
And thankfully, since we were on the 3rd floor, there was again a small cupboard that passed for an elevator:
We rounded a corner and found this:
The Duomo of Florence:
In Rome the churches were often not ornate at all outside, only inside. This one takes the cake for overdoing not only the inside but also the outside. 🙂 It’s also huge:
From a distance I had thought that all the colour was paint, but no, this is all different shades of marble: reds, pinks, greens, blues etc.. Here’s a small closeup of the detail of the work:
Inside the dome wasn’t too bad either 😉
We quickly continued on as we had a very important lunch date!
There were quite a few Fiat Multipla cars here, and in Rome too, where they are often used as taxis. That’s interesting to us as we used to own a Multipla and it would have to be the most practical car we’ve ever owned!
Now, as it turns out, this should have been a hint for us to take a taxi to our lunch date, which was at the top of a hill as Mike had a blister on his foot. But did we think of that? No. We soldiered on. Ha! 😉
We passed a pretty carousel in a square:
Florence had a very medieval feel to it, so pretty:
This marketplace was picturesque:
The old Ponte Vecchio bridge was packed with tourists:
According to Wikipedia it is a “Medieval stone closed-spandrel segmental arch bridge over the Arno River” built in 1345 and still used for shops and trade today.
We hurried on, although at this point I think Mike identified a bit with this guy. 😉
We followed the river, this was looking back at Ponte Vecchio:
We began our climb up the hill, going through the ancient wall just to the right of the centre of this photo:
Here’s the wall from further up the hill:
From the top the Duomo (marble church pictured earlier) dominates Florence:
And Ponte Vecchio can easily be seen:
YES!!! Made it for our lunch date with very good friends from Wellington, the Calcotts:
Only a Calcott….
Do we know these people? Ha!
Graeme checked out the art work in a square, he is an artist himself, and a very good one, check out his art at www.graemecalcott.co.nz
Then we went into the Ufizi Gallery, where, as you’d expect here, even the ceilings are works of art:
This is one of the halls in the Ufizi:
One of the rooms in the Ufizi:
Actually, every room was an artwork in itself:
Graeme decided he needed to do a bit of censorship work although really, I think he was doing this on the wrong side of the statue. 😉
After I took this photo, another lady who saw us, took a photo of the back of this statue too (but not the front!) as she must have thought there was something special about it since we’d stopped specially to photograph the derriere! We had a good chuckle about that! 😀
There were so many beautiful paintings, by Botticelli, Da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo etc..
Outside again!
And time for some gelato:
Then we went into the Galileo Museum:
This map of the world… I’m pretty sure you’d get lost if you tried to go somewhere using it. 🙂
I almost caught the kiss, but wasn’t quite fast enough:
Outside we walked towards the Ponte Vecchio.
Saw this amazing chalk artwork:
We sat down in the square of the Duomo for another drink:
And while we were sitting there we heard this woman singing beautifully, accompanied by the accordian:
I also noticed all the people who had gone up to the top of the Duomo:
We finished our day with a delicious meal in perfect surroundings, the end of a perfect day with many precious memories!