Chapter 4 - Day 26 - Venice to Florence

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Today was mainly a travel day as we left Venice and headed to Florence in the heart of Tuscany. We largely retraced our steps of a couple of days earlier so it was a good opportunity to have some quiet time (and a little snooze) on the bus for most.
Just south of Venice we passed through some rice paddy fields – bit of a surprise – the area is one of the few outside of Japan that has commercial rice fields.

ST GIMIGNANO – MEDIEVAL TUSCAN TOWN
Initially we skirted Florence and headed to the medieval town of St Gimignano. It was a picturesque drive through picture postcard Tuscan countryside. We had to park the coach on the edge of town, as inside the city walls was mainly pedestrianised. St Gimignano has an ice cream shop that has been voted the world’s best for the last few years, it is a favourite of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and current Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi. Insight shouted us all an ice cream there and it was lovely.

We had a look around, there were some awesome ceramic pottery places but unfortunately large ceramic pots are not the most practical purchase for the traveler. We had lunch at a restaurant with stunning views across the surrounding countryside. We ordered a specialty of the area Steak Florentine – it is cooked medium rare (on the rare side) and between 3 of us we got a 1.4kg steak to share. It was presented cut into strips off the central bone and it was absolutely delicious.

It was a very quaint hilltop town, however the fact it had two torture museums was an indication that it had something of a dodgy past.

FLORENCE
On the way into Florence we stopped at a square overlooking the city which offered spectacular views and for some reason was particularly popular with Japanese tourists. It was there we saw our first full size replica of the most famous attraction in Florence, the statue of David by Michelangelo – this one was in bronze not marble.

It took us a while to find and get to our Hotel in Florence. There are 3 NH Hotels in the city and we almost ended up at the wrong one! Plus the streets around the hotel are extremely narrow and no suited to a coach at all. In the end though Mario our super driver worked his magic and we were dropped at the door. The Hotel room are slightly dated but very large and suited us fine.

We had dinner at the Hotel and afterwards walked down the nearby river to the centre of town, Florence by night is really beautiful and the river walk into town was lovely. We then looped back through the city to the Hotel. It was a beautiful night for a walk with temperatures in the early 20’s. Not a huge day by any stretch of the imagination but quite a casual and relaxing one.

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Photos

Welcome toTuscany
The countryside is just beautiful

Worlds best Ice Cream
Yumm! This ice cream Shop in a small Tuscan town has been voted the best in the world!

David by Michaelangelo
This is a bronze replica of the famous statue, we saw 2 replicas and the original during our time in Florence