After the week of rancho relaxoness & Tuscan countrysiding, Florence was a bit of a shock to the system. We attempted to get Tom-Tom to take us directly to our hotel, which was right in the heart of Florence, but if you’ve ever been to Florence, or can imagine what a medieval town’s roads to be like, you’ll guess we had difficulty! After a few wrong turns, Catherine got on the blower to the hotel owner & he advised us to pullover & wait, he’d run down to meet us & direct the way to the car park himself – when that’s the easiest option, you know you’re in a rabbit warren! We eventually managed to get directed to the car park where Porky the Peugeot would stay, and we trekked the 4 or so blocks to our B&B hotel on foot. So glad we did – not only were the roads pretty much tiiiiiny, the masses of people spilling over them made it hair-raising enough just to walk them, let alone drive. Also the Florence city council had recently changed all the road rules too, so roads you could once drive down were now pedestrian only & vice-versa. I actually don’t think even the police knew what you could & couldn’t do, so we knew this stay would definitely be a carless one.
After the luxury & plushness that was Siena House, Catherine was talking down our Florence home as she didn’t want us getting our hopes up for heaven on a stick everywhere! But it was actually a really lovely little place, right in the heart of Florence. You couldn’t have asked for a better location. We had organised for just one room here, but it was sort of like two anyway – B&C got a lovely big room & Jamie & I got a cute little section just inside the door. There was plenty of space, a nice big bathroom & it was waaaay better than I thought it would be so Catherine still held her queen room organiser crown!
We got a few food recommendations from Luciano the owner & set off on our separate ways till dinner time. J & I wandered around, a bit bemused by all the tourists. If we thought Turkey was full-on, it was nothing compared to this. Everywhere you looked it was either young American honeymooners (which cracked me up, you could imagine them planning a romantic holiday, just the two of them, all set for romance & history to sweep them off their feet, instead they got tourist central with every other man & his dog – seriously, Iran, with its whole no touching & potential stoning thing was waaay more romantic than here) or massive old people tour groups. Trying to avoid the crowds, we wandered a few streets away from the big sight-seeing bits & stumbled across this old camera shop. We stopped, as is the usual practice, to look for the mythical underpriced Leica, and we were called in by an old man, sitting on a chair chatting to a women. We marvelled at his stock & being an old Italian charmer, he announced he was single before explaining that this was the oldest shop in Florence & he had been here since the 40′s. Turns out the woman was American & she was interviewing him, for what I’m not too sure, but I think he sensed he had a captive audience & he started to pull out some old shots of the shop & the day it was bombed by the nazi’s & his young son. He then got out a book that showed all the damage that was inflicted on Florence in WWII, pictures of when he saw Hitler, pictures of the flood that nearly destroyed Florence in the 60′s I think it was, so much history in this one little shop front. It was just the antidote we needed to melt our frozen tourist hearts. Yes, you can still have a personal experience here, you could still find something original in Florence, there could be something more than shopping & churches to this place yet!
We reconvened later that evening with B&C & headed out to one of the places Luciano recommended that served traditional Florence grub. It was the best meal of the trip so far I reckon – well, at least the best food in Italy we’ve consumed! I had Osso Bucco with peas & bacon, Jamie & Barry had roast pork with potatoes & Catherine nearly had Roast chicken & potatoes, but somehow ended up with tender chicken breast & tomatoes. It was so hearty & delicious & tasty, sigh, it was what you imagine Italian food to be like & what I dreamed this bit of the trip would be about. A litre of red wine & a Tirimisu later (I HAD to order one, I would have been disowned by Cheryl if I didn’t 
) we happily weaved our way back to our little hotel & fell asleep in the darkest room I have ever slept in (no windows will do that I guess).
Day 2 in Florence saw us being super tourists & buying tickets to the Uffizi gallery to view some ‘old painting shit’. Well, it was actually a free day to visit the gallery, but we ended up ‘booking’ some tickets for 4 Euro each so we didn’t have to queue! So money can buy everything 
We were due to go in at 11.15, so we parted again & had a quick tour of Zara (a re-con visit, to see what we might want to buy later…i’m addicted, I know) & a quick Espresso to keep us awake (I told ya, museumy stuff ain’t our thing, but I love a good art gallery & with some Caravaggio paintings inside, I thought it worth the effort) we were ready to be all arty & stuff.
Sigh. If I ever see another painting, sculpture or drawing of Baby Jesus again my head may just explode. That sums up our trip to Uffizi. Lots of religious art – like LOTS of it & that creepy religious stuff, like fat baby’s with wings, wacky scenes depicting heaven & of course a million interpretations of Baby Jesus (starting to think the whole not drawing Muhammad thing was really thought up by someone who visited these type of galleries & was so bored & over it they decided that they would ban all depictions of their prophet to save themselves the pain of having to look at another artists interpretation of him…hmmm…was that inappropriate…probably…Jamie, delete this when you’re proof reading). No, I jest, it wasn’t that bad. There was the Birth of Venus which was very awe-inspiring and despite there being only 2 Caravaggios, I was most happy with them & left the museum shop with some lovely new postcards to go on my wall…actually…I think I just like art museums for their museum shops…
We had a few hours of admin to do that afternoon, so Jamie went back to get started & I hit the shops, but after battling the crowds & waiting in line for the change rooms for half an hour, I gave up & headed back to the hotel empty-handed. Jamie had found a few places in Berlin we could stay at, so after taking care of that, we headed off to the train station in the hope we could book our tickets from Milan to Munich from there. We weren’t confident though, our China train experience – or lack thereof – left us expecting the worst. Luckily, we landed in the right line & managed to book it – so a successful admin afternoon indeed!
For sunset, we all walked up to the top of Michelangelo Plaza for a view over the top of Florence. Again, you could see those hoping for a wildly romantic moment – only to have to share it with 100 other people. We did see a wedding though – and a hens party, so I guess romance isn’t dead in the heart of Florence! We got some alright snaps, but the worms were calling, so we headed back down to our favourite little restaurant for another serve of their fine Florence food (Bazza went Roast Pork again, Catherine & I went roast lamb & Jamie went Spag Bol – though it wasn’t a patch on his, so he said) I was tempted by the Tiramasui again, but remembered I hadn’t yet sampled the Florence gelato, so we exited without dessert & headed across the road for a Hazelnut & Chocolate cup (Stop Press: Hazelnut is the new Pistachio – Craig, it’s official, nothing is better than the Amsterdam Pistachio, Jamie has had to change flavours as he has declared nothing lives up to it). We fell into bed full, satisfied & a teensy bit anxious about having to drive out of here in the morning…
