Italia Grandiosa - Florence

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I woke up at 6 am. I had a very lousy breakfast at 7.30. Breakfast consisted out of 2 very thin slices of bread with some jam. People were trying to find something more to eat, but there wasn’t any. Opa was managing the coffee machine, so you couldn’t get too much coffee. There were some very expensive cars parked at the hotel. There was a Lamborghini and some Porches. I was wondering why, if you can afford such an expensive car, you would stay at such a lousy hotel?
We walked to the train station of Ronta at 9.00 and took the train to Florence ( Firenze ). It took around 1 hour to get there. At Florence we were met by a local guide. I took the chance to get some ham and cheese sandwiches for breakfast. Because Florence is very crowded, we were given some headphones so we could hear the guide better.
We walked around in Florence for around 3 hours, and saw many magnificent buildings and statues. The time was too short to be able to see everything. You can spend a week easily in town. The main things we saw were the Duomo ( Basilica Santa Maria del Fiore ), the Battistero, Piazza della Signoria and we ended at the Ponte Vecchio. I think there is more historic buildings in Florence alone than in the whole of the Netherlands.
Florence is a town that grew to be important in the 11th century. It’s a renaissance town. In the 12th century Florence was an independent country. The Fiorino d’oro was one of the main currencies in Europe. Even the Dutch currency was named after it, the florin ( fl ). The town is still intact, it was bombed heavily during World War 2, and even the flooding of 1966 it overcame.
We had lunch at a bar. I didn’t want to take any risks for dinner again, so I had a chicken snitzel with French fries, and pasta dish. After lunch we were suppost to go to the basilica Santa Croce. I had walked out of the restaurant to have a look at a shop. When I returned everyone had all ready left. I thought they had left 5 minutes early, so I decided I would walk there by myself. It was only a 15 minutes walk and the basilica was very impressive. I didn’t see anyone else of the group, so I looked around by myself. After 30 minutes I was almost finished, when the rest of the group came in. It seems that they were looking for me… They had left the restaurant, and were waiting for me at the other side of the street. They didn’t see me leave, and after waiting for 10 minutes they tried to find me.
In the basilica Santa Croce there are many crypts of famous Italian people, like Michelangelo, Machiavelli and Galileo Galilei. There are also a lot of frescos painted by Giotto.
After this we had an hour for our self to look around the town. I went to the Duomo again to have a look inside the basilica. The wealth of the interior of the basilicas does always surprise me. I had a short look around, and then walked back towards the train station. I waited at a restaurant with some other people while enjoying a wine. We went to the train station at 17.00, but the train was late. We had to wait until 18.00 before the train arrived. There were some drunken Italians who had been on a camping trip that wanted to practice their English. They were drunk, and funny. They smelled like they hadn’t smoked just tobacco.
Back at the hotel we had dinner, this time the food was fine. Had a beer after dinner and went to sleep at 22.30.

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