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Published: October 21st 2013
Firenze to Roma After leaving Monte Carlo we drove to the seaside town of Deiva Marina half way in between La Spezia and Portofino. We had enough time to get ourselves organised and went 3km into town for a walk around and dinner.
We found a lovely local Ristorante and sat down to some local delights, one of our best meals so far. I had an Octopus Salad followed by Spaghetti Vongole (clams) while Michelle had a prosciutto insalate and short spaghetti in pesto. Jacob had a frankfurter pizza which was yum! Jacob is now the king of pizza and has sworn off Domino’s!
Firenze by Mike It was a pretty cruisy journey from Deiva Marina to Firenze (Florence) ad we arrived around lunchtime. We bought some bus tickets at the camp ground and proceeded into town which was about 10kms away. We were unfortunately not told that in Italy you have to validate your ticket when you get on the bus (this was our first bus trip), so we went all the way to the last stop and then the officious bus conductor called a colleague over and
started to read the riot act in Italian. The younger one spoke English and had some sympathy for us and negotiated leniency for us. Jacob was let off and Michelle and I ‘got away’ with a spot fine €50 each! Ouch! Michelle was furious – pity the next poor street vendor to get in her face!
We bought a hop on hop off bus ticket to take us in a city loop. We saw some grand architecture. The detail in the sculpture is amazing. Gorgeous buildings that words can’t really capture. We got off at the Palais de Michelangelo where you see the Florence skyline. It seems to go on forever, with the domes and the like punctuating the canvas of brick and stone cast by the rest of the city. The grandeur of the city in front of you. The Pillar behind…grand.
After the loop we roamed the streets, absorbing the energy around us. The people watching I have to say is fascinating too.
Dinner time and we sit down to some local cuisine. Home made pasta with sausage and ricotta the highlight for me. Michelle had a lovely green
salad with penne pasta with gorgonzola and walnuts. After that some more wandering down to the Duomo. OMG! It was dusk – the street stalls are full. The peddlars are flogging off little neon helicopter gadgets that appear like a swarm of fireflys in the dim light. The Duomo is amazing. You could look at it for hours. The colour the expression on every individual face telling its own story.
Back to camp and determined to get to one of the da Vinci Museums the next day. Retail therapy had calmed Michelle’s nerves and we were happy to enjoy a Chianti and a good nights sleep.
Firenze by Jacob After a lot of searching we found the Da Vinci museum. It was a reasonably early start and there was a chill in the air. As we entered the museum we were bombarded by Da Vinci artefacts and souvenirs. It seems they did their research… Because the bombardment caused us to eventually purchase some souvenirs. As we first entered we saw his early inventions like the tank and the model of the horse. As we moved through the museum going deeper we
found our way to his designs of the robot and machine gun. We eventually saw all his other inventions but after the inventions we saw some of his famous artworks like the ‘Mona Lisa’ and ‘The Last Supper’ (Copies of the originals). We saw a video explaining the history of Da Vinci and his artworks. After the artwork encounter we walked into a room full of fully functioning mechanisms that he had designed from cogs and gears to weather measuring devices. After the entire museum we bought the souvenirs.
Da Vinci was an amazing person who was disliked by many due to the fact he was so overly good at everything. He was involved in Astronomy, Anatomy, Inventing, Drawing, Painting and Philosophy. His art was absolutely fantastic. You can physically see how he used the brush to paint the emotion into people’s faces and the environment. He was an amazing inventor who was well beyond his time. He used his skill in Astronomy to discover things many others could not. He was also one of the famous artists who had homosexual relations.
THE END.
Ps. Old stuff rules.
Sienna by Michelle Wow, I thought Firenze was pretty gorgeous. Mind you it had to be to get over my foul mood the officious bus police put me in over those fines! Anyway after we left Firenze we drove a short one hour to the town of Siena which had been recommended to us by the English couple at the Avignon campsite.
Now just to backtrack a moment – when we were having breakfast this morning in the middle of Firenze we noticed a huge number of people of all ages arriving in the city centre dressed in yellow t-shirts. We couldn’t read/understand what the event was but it clearly was an event as people also had numbers pinned to these shirts similar to when you enter a running event. They were a mixture of ages, sizes and numbers of legs (lots of dogs too) and most were dressed casually but not in ‘exercise’ clothing so we were a bit stumped? After some asking around it turned out it was Italy’s National Walking Day and to celebrate you could enter the ‘Firenze Marathon’, receive your t-shirt and a map of a walking route in
the city that took in most major landmarks. What a fabulous idea we thought as did the twenty something thousand who had entered! We were most disappointed not to be a part of it!
Back to Sienna. We arrived at a fantastic campsite (they just keep getting better!), bought bus tickets, got on bus, VALIDATED BUS TICKETS and arrived in Sienna. Huge noise, cheering, chanting and we realised we could hear a football game at the stadium – Mike instantly loved this city! Around the corner and what do we see but a stall set up promoting Sienna’s equivalent of the walking day marathon. We signed up on the spot, received out orange backpacks with a map and were given a ticket to get stamped off at each of the ten main check-ins. We were also told that once we completed the route we would get our ‘prize’ – ohh how exciting! We spent just over two hours exploring and stopping in at each of the check-in sights. Most of the time we had no idea what the guides were saying in their spiel but at three sites they had a guide with enough English to roughly
explain what the significance of the area was. The cutest part of this was the lengths to which the Italian guides (history type students) would apologise for their lack of English. Ironic given they were actually very good (which we frequently assured them) whilst we were still butchering the Italian language in simple greetings and questions! Post walk we went back to the main Piazza (square) for dinner. Tiredness starting to kick in I actually craved (and ate) red meat for the first time since leaving home. Watched a young couple complete what appeared to be a town wedding tradition as they post ceremony ‘walked’ the Piazza as everybody there (hundreds if not thousands) stopped what they were doing to make way for them and cheer! What joy, what celebration – we would be far too reserved in New Zealand to do this!
Sienna – simply stunning!
PS: we didn’t get our ‘prize’ but us ‘Kiwi’s’ of course are too polite to ask for anything!
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Lorna
non-member comment
Loving loving loving the blog - but sorry guys, Jake is by far the most entertaining. His final par on Da Vinci had me in stitches (although this may not have been his intent) :-) Very jealous of your travels - see you are taking cruise from Istanbul. We are thinking of doing one with Oceania next year from there, 10 nights to Barcelona. Look forward to hearing how this part goes as Steve is less than keen on the idea of cruising xxx