Firenze (The city of Florence)

Looking out over Firenze from Michelangelo's Square

We arrived in Florence Monday (31st August afternoon after we thought it best to miss the maddening crowds of the weekend. I think anytime would be busy in Firenze with tourists as there is so much for them to see in regards to the Arts and History.

Statues in Piazza Della Signoria

We found a Camper Park 4km out of Firenze along the River Arno, which was perfect for cycling into town. Firenze is a very bike friendly city as well as thousands of scooters too. Perfect on the old narrow flat streets.
We parked our bikes up just out of the main piazza and walked into the centre, purchasing a 5 Euro Florence Guidebook - again perfect. We looked at the option of doing one of the walking tours but they weren't cheap and included a lot of museums, which we thought if we were keen we could do ourselves. So this book was great with all the Monuments, Squares, Palaces, Churches, Fortresses, Bridges, Parks etc, listed and with some detail.

Replica of David
cast in Bronze

The first Piazza we walked into was the Della Signoria (13th Century) where numerous famous marble, granite & brass statues fill large areas of the square. It is quite an awesome sight - a replica of Michelangelo's David looking pretty impressive along with statues of Greek Gods such as Hercules & Cacus, Neptune, Roman figures and many others. A huge collection of famous painters & sculptures from Italy's Renaissance past all on permanent exhibition in such an outdoor museum setting.

Basilica of Santa Croce

Bill & I were here 35 years ago when we did a 3 week Contiki tour but neither of us could recall much of the time in Florence except for the lovely old bridge of Vecchio that everyone will know from postcards and paintings, and the leather shops. There are hundreds of leather merchants either in shops or stalls that are set up all around the city centre. One Vendor managed to talk us into his shop and got us into one of his jackets. They were stunning! And he was very

Ponte Vecchio on sunset

good at guessing what would fit us well, very tempted. But when we thought about it, how much wear would we get out of them for the price! No, that is still a lot of travelling we can do.
We continued on into the Plazza Duomo where the cathedral is, what an amazing sight that was in the late afternoon with the sun going behind all the other historic buildings in the square. Massive! They began building it in the late 12th century, over the ruins of another earlier church. This place (Italy) just has soooooooo much history. And this was also a great place to stop & have a very cold beer to cool us in 30 odd degrees still.

Aware we didn't have lights on our bikes, we started to think about returning back to camp just as the sun was setting. Lighting up the old bridge of Vecchio with all it's
small shops lining the sides ( in early times these were butchers, but now all jewellers - I would imagine quite a different smell in it's time) - giving off beautiful colours that I tried to capture on my phone camera as our good camera had gone flat! What a time for it to die!!

Not all fun on this trip
chores still have to be done!

Tuesday we were up, washing done and off on our bikes up the hill to Michelangelo's Square where a huge brass statue of David looks out over the town. A massive carpark full of tourist buses and of course tourists. Plus stall holders with cheap souvenirs. Bill was tempted by the T shirts, you should thank me Shannon & Rocky that I wouldn't let him buy you one.
Between the big burn off of scrub in the distance and the heat of the day, the views weren't crystal clear like they can be at home. But the sights are amazing.
We headed from Michelangelo's Piazza across the ridge following the old city walls to the Belvedere Fortress, a military fortress from the 16th century,

Digital Subject 

which happened to be exhibiting the

Some of the "Human" subjects on exhibit
out the front of the Fortress Belvedere

"Human" exhibition. Bill took about 500 photo's so I'm sure there will be a couple we can put up here for you to get an idea of the showing of the human form in different postures.
We continued down into the city finding somewhere suitable for lunch before continuing on around the other piazza's of the central old city. Passed by where all the tourists arriving by train were coming up into the city - what a busy & hectic area that was with traffic & people dragging suitcases. Felt better walking along those streets, rather than riding, a bit close with buses etc. Lots of stalls along the way with very pushy vendors, you can't just look, they are right in your face with their products telling you what to buy. What is surprising, with so many stalls, all selling the same lines / items, is how they all make a living! That is hard to understand.
Wednesday we headed off into the hills toward the East Coast travelling on what was once a main road but with the Auto Stratta's, is now a secondary road.

Lots of signage for road works that look like they have been there a few years awaiting on workmen to come and finish the jobs I guess when funding is allocated.As much as I hate heights, the road was more like travelling over the Whangamoas just out of Nelson. At the top of the pass was a brick wall dividing the road into the two lanes, which we read later was for travellers to shelter from the winds! Thankfully it wasn't like that when we travelled over. Half way down the other side we found a lovely little camp for the next two nights in San Benedetto In Alpe. This area is a National Park, with a lot of walking tracks chris cross through the area, so we chose one that went up one side of the river from 500 meters to 920 at the top of the ridge, along and then a gentle decent down past the famous waterall of

The famous falls Acquacheta

"Acquacheta" not quite up to our NZ standards, but to be fair, they haven't had much rain in the last couple of months.
After nearly 6 hours we returned to camp to much needed showers and a few wines with our lovely German neighbours who gave us a lot of pointers on future travel, which hopefully will be very useful as we continue our travels.

One of the many paved sections of the track