An Italian masterpiece (Florence (Tuscany))

Member Name: Gromit

Product:	Florence (Tuscany)
Date:	23/10/00 (84 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small, lots to see

Disadvantages: Hotels are expensive

Italy is a wonderful place to visit and, in autumn of 1999, my wife, daughter and I went to Florence. If you are interested in art, churches and history, then this is a city of wonders. Getting to Florence was a little tricky for us. We had some air miles and used them to fly to Milan with British Airways and flew on to Florence in a small turboprop shuttle. The first stage was fine but my daughter didn’t like the second stage. Being a small plane it was buffeted quite a bit by the wind and this made her ill. Whilst it was not a serious disaster, it was not a good start to the holiday. Having now made the journey, I would not advise people to go this way. I would suggest the best route would be to fly to Pisa and take the train to Florence. The trains are relatively cheap and quite frequent.

Florence is the capitol of Tuscany and the river Arno flows through the centre of the city. The famous bridge that crosses the river is the Ponte Vecchio. This is a beautiful old bridge that everybody who goes to Florence will want to see. There are lots of little shops along the bridge and the vast majority are jewellers. Probably the best time to see the bridge, though, is at night when it is lit up. The bridge acts as a magnet for the young and there are street musicians creating a very nice atmosphere.

A great feature of Florence is the fact that all of the major attractions are quite close together and it is quite easy to walk from site to site. There are a lot of museums and galleries. The most famous museum is the Ufizzi. This is claimed to be one of the top five most important museums in the world and after visiting it, I can understand why. The building itself is a superb late Renaissance design but inside are some of the best paintings in the world. The famous artists include Raphael, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Caravaggio, Titian, Rubens and Rembrandt – to name just some of them! It is a very impressive place to visit.

The most fa
mous square in Florence is where the Duomo, Giotto’s Tower and Battistero di San Giovanni are located. The Battistero is the oldest building in Florence and outside is the famous door, known as the Door of Paradise. For a small fee you can go inside. It is a relatively small building but it is very ornately decorated. The ceiling, in particular, is wonderfully decorated with religious scenes. The Duomo is the city’s cathedral and entrance, of course, is free. This building dominates Florence’s skyline and if you are flying in, this is the first building you will recognise. The church itself is very nice but for a small fee you can go to the top of the bell tower – to the highest point in the city. The climb up the stairs is worthwhile for a lovely view over the city but it is a difficult climb in some places. For another small fee you can climb up to the top of Giotto’s Tower for another great view over the city. This climb is also steep but there are plenty of places to stop and rest on the way up.

One of the other famous churches is Church of Santa Croce. Another great reason for visiting this church is that you have to pass near Vivoli, a small ice cream shop that is reckoned to make the best ice cream in the world. I’m not sure whether it’s true but the ice cream was very nice and we did make the effort to go back. Whilst there are many, many more famous places to visit, the other two mains ones are the Pitti Palace and the Accademia. The Pitti Palace is another great place to visit and full of art treasures. We found the Accademia to be one of the lesser places to visit and the only thing of interest was Michelangelo’s statue of David. It is worth visiting just to see the statue. It impressed my daughter so much she stood there for quite a while attempting to draw this statue. For a girl of 8, she did quite well.

The weather when we visited was pleasantly warm and just right for walking about the
city. There are plenty of restaurants to choose from. We tried quite a few and we were never once overcharged or ripped off. Sadly, this is something I cannot say when we visited Rome a few years earlier. In Rome, it was always a battle to find out what the meal would cost. Our experience in Rome made us very wary of restaurant pricing but in Florence, all the restaurant meal and wine prices were fair and they would gladly serve you house wine in a carafe.

Florence is quite small so I can easily imaging that in summer it would be very hot and very crowded. As I mentioned earlier, trains are very reasonable priced in Italy. We took a day out to visit Pisa to see the famous leaning tower. The journey takes about an hour and there seemed to be at least one train every hour. It was an easy and pleasant trip. The leaning tower was very nice but we could find little else to do in Pisa. Still, it was a nice break.

Our only complaint was the quality and cost of the hotel. I have to say that Florence is not unusual here as my experience with all Italian hotels is that they are very overpriced – and you get very little for what you pay for. This just seems like a price you have to pay to visit Italy.

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