As you can see the Remoska is still working well!
Thursday 3rd June.
Well off to Florence, only about 65 miles BUT on Italian roads with our dodgy sat-nav it took 2½ hours! As it wasn’t very far we had decided not to use the motorways as we wanted to see more of the countryside. After a couple of lefts and a right we found ourselves in a long traffic queue with a view of the leaning tower and Duomo on our left. Before too long the bulk of the traffic turned off for Milan and left us with a pleasant enough drive we thought. The next thing we know is we are on a very small winding mountain road. Fortunately we did not meet anything very big coming the other way. Our campsite was in the outskirts of the city to the south west easily reachable we later discovered, on a fairly major road, BUT we were taken on a strange circuitous route which we still cannot fathom.
The site was a nice enough place on the side of a steep hill with a line of pylons running through it and you just sort of drove around until you found somewhere fairly level to pitch. The toilets were reached down a very steep hill as were the other facilities, the bar, market and pool. We found the nice Dutch/ German people! They are all here, all smiles and chatty. While chatting to one couple Joan learned that we could obtain the bus timetable and actually purchase our tickets from the office, why didn’t they say when Joan enquired about a city map? In an effort to show how fit she is,(that can be the only reason for going down a 1 in 3 and back), the small one, while I was busy, went down but came back empty handed because it was very busy, so we had to go back down later!
The next morning early we were up and away to the bus stop, about three quarters of a mile away and caught it no bother, I even remembered to punch our ticket in the machine. On arrival we made straight for the Galleria dell’Accademia where they have the original statue of David by Michelangelo as Joan wanted to see it. Had we known, you can buy tickets in advance and join a very small queue but we didn’t know and had to queue for 1½ bloomin hours!! When we entered we went through airport type security, bags through ‘X’ ray machine, people through doorway scanner, you would have thought that was a good time to point out you mustn’t take pictures, but no. So when we finally get to David standing there naked, Joan whips out her camera and fires off two shots before being jumped on by the guards! She was suitably contrite so they let her off with a warning but actually the signs were quite little and up high and she is not called the small one for nothing, she genuinely hadn’t seen them!
After that we needed lunch, which was of course a pizza and Joan is still going on about the fact that a can of coke cost us €4! Then straight to the Duomo (Cathedral), outside it is really ornate but inside what a disappointment and the piped music was a bit naff. Leaving there we wandered around, had a huge ice cream, as you do, while making for the Leonardo pictures but again there was a huge queue and we were all queued out so we made our way to the bus and home.
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Did we like Florence? Well it was as Ken had said very busy and full of traffic, but the buildings were nice and if we had done a bit of preparation we would have had tickets for all the main attractions in advance, which would have made things easier. Having said that we had a pretty good day and managed the climb back up the hill to our van easily which means we are definitely a lot fitter now.
Hopefully we will get wi-fi soon as this is getting to be very long indeed, sorry.
Lots of love
Bryan & Joan
Xxxx
Happy Birthday Eleanor! XXXX
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