Blogs from Florence, Tuscany, Italy, Europe - page 7

This Palazzo was built on what were the outer limits of the medieval city as the Corsini family’s weekend retreat. Hence it has extensive gardens still used and visited today. We were lucky that our visit to Florence coincided with the annual four day Artisan festival. Former stables and out buildings house local artisans working at their craft. Jewellers, silver smiths, wood turners, glass makers, shoemakers, potters, designers of all sorts show off their wares. The sun shone and it was quite warm in the beautiful formal gardens filled with the scent of the flowering Linden trees and stylish Florentines, both men and women. Tonight we’re going to the opening of an exhibition of Australian (!) prints at a gallery along near Il Bisonte. It opens at 6pm. The guy said “This is Italy. Don’t come ... read more

As I write this, at 5.30pm, the bells from our local church Santa Felicita, about 20 metres away, are ringing, reminding us of how close we are to everything in Florence. Our apartment is hidden away behind a large arched doorway, through a sort of garage housing a Fiat Bambina covered in the Italian flag, and into our private courtyard. It is so quiet we forget about the hustle and bustle of the street outside. We are well settled in for our nearly 3 week stay. We’ve stocked up from the supermarket just round the corner, the phone has a local SIM card, the bus pass is purchased as are our tickets for the garden festival at Palazzo Corsini al Prato, as well as our Friends of the Uffizzi card which will get us into, at ... read more

Florence today - the hotel screwed us over because we're a school group and moved our breakfast from 7am to 7h50... but it worked out in terms of even though they lost some free time in the morning, they still had 6hrs in the afternoon so like... that works. Omg the "eggs" at breakfast were the most questionable thing I've ever seen. And they messed up all our rooms so we had kids literally all over the hotel. Major fails compared to all the other hotels we've stayed at on this trip. ANYWAY. We drove into town and went up to Piazzale Michaelangelo for a beautiful viewpoint of the city. Two of the teachers are in a band and have a gig the night after we get back - so they did a promo video and ... read more

Después de 4 aviones y más de 24 horas de viaje, llegué a Florencia. Eran las 7 de la noche, hora local, cuando salí del aeropuerto. Puedo decir en este momento, valió la pena. Florencia es preciosa, excede su fama. Fue una aventura llegar al hostal, el cual está bien ubicado, cerca del centro, cruzando el río por el Puente de La Trinidad. Para empezar, no está rotulado, me costó encontrarlo. Resulta que se encuentra en un tercer piso, subiendo unas escaleras frías y oscuras. Llego y me recibe un extranjero tipo árabe. Mi reacción inicial fue salir corriendo. Sin embargo me contuve, la verdad la gente muy amable, es un lugar de cuartos compartidos con viarias camas tipo litera, aunque sólo se utilizan las de abajo por lo que vi. Está lleno de extranjeros de ... read more

up early again to get a sunrise but there was no cloud and no colour so back to the room for breakfast and then head off in a taxi 10 euro to the train station, Had a coffee while we waited for the train, it took 1 and a half hours to get to florenceeeee , fell asleep writing this last night so its now the next day but looking back we easily found our bnb thanks to a map and a good taxi driver , but the owners have not replied to our messages or maybe they never got them because the taxi driver rang him and he answered straight away and a lady came there in 10 mins. we had already ordered a coffee at a cafe on the corner so we had to ... read more