A Feast of Medieval Towns

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Florence was a feast for the senses, a treasure trove of delights with small alley ways, cascades of rich red geraniums hanging from balconies, colourful markets, Tuscan Gothic churches and museums full of paintings and sculptures from antiquity. Michelango's David is there, so are paintings by Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, and the Great Masters. This place hits your senses visually. A walk down any road, or Via, really a lane way, brings you Medieval doorways, arches, cobblestone paving and lastly cars that shouldn't be there.

Our apartment was in Via Dei Pepi, just metres from Santa Croce. The position was great and it was interesting how an unimposing exterior can reveal a cosy and contemporary interior. We had a great set up with a modern kitchen and bathroom and all the basics provided.

Shopping was fun, and it was always a surprise, wondering what would be the best cheese or the best salami and we found the language barrier was no problem; just pointing and smiling does the job. The vine grown baby tomatoes are so full of flavour, they pop in your mouth and we continue to enjoy them wherever we are. We've worked our way through local cheeses, proscuitto, salami, bread and the local chicken pate, mostly with success. John always checks out the local wines and we are working our way through those too.

Florence, requires walking. It is easy to get to everything and 10 minutes will get you where you want to be. We covered all of Florence and soon became familiar with the rabbit warren of small Medieval laneways, so unsuited to cars, buses and trucks, all manoevering around the crazily parked motorbikes.

The secret here is to start early. We lined up at the Galleria dell'Academia to see the statue of David at 8.00am and there were only 6 people ahead of us. When it opened at 8.15 we virtually had the place to ourselves. We didn't have to pay the exhorbitant fees to skip the queues and we avoided the huge number of tours that come in later. To be able to see the chisel marks on Michelangelo's unfinished statues and get to see the magnificent master piece David, was a memory I will never forget.

I loved the displays here, especially the ancient instrument collection, and listened to the music of these instruments in the sound library. This display brought the sounds of medieval times into the here and now. I bought a CD of some of this music to enjoy later and to use as a sound track to videos I'll be making later.

We loved you Florence, your architecture, piazzas, galleries, churches, museums, crazy roads, vibrant markets, tranquil and beautiful parks and friendly people. Arrivederci.

Siena

We caught the regional train from Florence to Siena and are now getting into the swing of buying tickets, validating them and finding the correct platform.

The railway at Siena is at the bottom of the hillside and to get to the top they have constructed a series of escalators and moving walkways. We travelled for about 10 minutes up and up on them until we reached the top. It's an amazing construction and must have cost them a fortune. It certainly makes life easier for getting from the bottom of the steep hill to the top, where the city is. The B and B we stayed at, Vacanze Senese is near the top of this moving walkway and Carlo, our hospitable host, was ready to great us.

Siena is truely beautiful, the home of the famous horse race around the Piazza del Campo and of the colour siena. The whole city has a unity of colour, hence the name, siena. This Medieval city has much in common with Florence, its Duomo and small laneways, but it is much smaller, not so many tourists and seemed more accessible. The joy here is to wander away from the main tourist areas and find the roads less travelled. We were fascinated by the variety of large wooden carved, oversized doors, with their elaborate door knockers. People must have thought we were mad photographing doors and their brass door knockers. These doorways gave no indication of the lovely courtyards that lay behind them.

The beautiful Duomo is a masterpiece of Tuscan Gothic architecture with its soaring green and white marble walls. Inside it is full of 13th and 14th century paintings, sculptures and mosaics. I can't recommend the audio guides highly enough, the information they give could easily be missed otherwise. There are statues by Michelangelo here, beautiful paintings and a circular mosaic on the floor depicting Remus' two infant children being suckled by a wolf. They apparently fled to Siena following Remus's murder by his brother Romulus. People without audio guides just walked straight past these masterpieces without knowing what they were missing.

John climbed the tower at the Piazza del Campo and took great photos of the town and surrounding countryside. I sat in the shade in the Piazza and watched a performer rehearsing for an Opera which was happening that night. I videoed it of course and I felt I was in heaven.

On our last night we had dinner in a lovely restaurant and sampled some local cuisine. The spleen pate I won't bother with again! The home made pasta was great, as was the Chianti. We met an English couple, Geoff and Linda. which added to this a lovely night. They were going to see some Italian Opera, so we went with them and the tickets we bought were late ones and sat at the back of the hall. Image our surprise when we were invited to have seat in the front row. We couldn't believe our luck and they must have had a sixth sense that I wanted to video the performance. The strength, beauty and passion of the voices blew me away. I am now in love with Italian Opera.

San Gimignano

We had a side trip to San Gimignano from Siena on John's birthday and it was quite an adventure to get there. We caught the train from Siena to Poggibonsi, then a bus from there to San Gimignano.

The town is very beautiful and was just like stepping back into a Medieval film set. Flags flew from battlements and the town was small and preserved just as it would have been in Medieval times, although it would have been much smellier then.

We climbed to the top of the tallest bell tower in the city, peered through the window slits and looked down over the town and the Tuscan countryside. We could see for miles and were pleased to have arrived early before more tour groups arrived following their leader holding up a flag on a stick. We're so pleased we're doing our own thing.

Lunch was in a shady cafe outside in a piazza, and we celebrated John's birthday here with a glass of chianti, happy to be in such a beautiful place.

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