Florence, Tuscany and PIsa

Today we made our way to Florence. We only have the afternoon to explore the city because we have a full day tour out to the Tuscan countryside and the mandatory Leaning Tower of Pisa.

We arrived about midday and luckily, they let us into our apartment to leave our bags there. This apartment is huge by comparison to all our other accommodation. It’s a two bedroom apartment with a spacious lounge and dining area as well as a separate kitchen…but wait there is more! We actually have two balconies.

We decide the best way to explore the city was to use the hop on hop off bus (a favourite of ours). This took us through the beautiful tree lines streets. There seems to b
e green spaces everywhere in Florence or maybe the buses only take you down the green streets.

We decided our first stop would be Michaelangelo Piazza which is high up on a hill overlooking the entire city. Its an amazing view and like all other famous tourist spots it’s teeming with tourists. Rylan and I hung near the edge and poor Terry hung admiring the view from a distance.

Next, we decided on was the small town of Fiesole which also perched very high on the hills that overlook Florence. Here there are Roman ruins and it is believed this is where Leonardo Da Vinci experimented with the idea of flight. We ended up spending quite a bit of time there wandering through the ruins and then through the museum that was also on site. 

By the time we finished there the day was almost over so we decided to find a place that our host suggested for dinner. It’s called Centrale Mercato and it is a huge food hall that is filled with dozens of food vendors selling delicious food. It was one of the places that you didn’t know where to look next because everything you look at looks so good. 

We ended up enjoying a night of great food, good wine and a bonus for the boys, there was a huge screen that had the soccer playing (Real Madrid and Barcleona).

We made it back to our apartment for a good night’s sleep in preparation for a long day trip to Tuscany hills and a visit to the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The first stop was Sienna which is a beautiful Tuscan town that has an unusual centre square. The town is built into a valley and all streets eventually run to the piazza in the centre of the town which opens out to a large fan shaped square that is front of the large gothic styled town hall. Another unusual fact about this square is that they hold a racehorse around the square twice a year. When you see how tight it is you wonder how that could possibly hold a race. 

The paved area around the top of the square is covered with dirt for the race and all the spectators view from the centre area. The are 17 ward who all enter a ballot for a horse to race but only ten horses run each race so some wards miss out. The rivalry between the wards is quite intense at this time.

Further up the hill is an amazing gothic style cathedral of black and white marble that was built in the 13th century. It looks pretty good for it’s age. When you enter it is very dark with distinctive black and white marble walls and columns. 

The entire floor is covered with intricate panels of mosaic tiles. The artworks and statues are all amazing but I found it all quite oppressive, so we decided not to stay too long. 

We decided to make our way back to the square for a coffee.

Next was a visit to a farm in the Chianti region. This is a working winery, olive and dairy farm. The setting was beautiful and the area all around was lush and beautiful. After a quick tour of the winery and a visit to see the cows that Rylan loved (he loves all animals) we had lunch that was included in the tour out on a lovely deck that gave a view of the surrounding farm and the medieval town of San Gimagnano. Lunch was simple but delicious all made from local produce form either the farm or the area.

Back on the bus we headed for San Gimagnano. The is a beautiful old village that has retained it’s medieval charm. So much so that it has a museum for medieval torture which was like a train wreck that we had to look at even though we knew we would cringe at some of the things we saw. It’s unbelievable what they put people through if the thought they were a witch, or even it was perceived they were guilty of some wrong doing.

Things got a bit more positive after that as we made our way to the centre square. This is where you can purchase a champion gelato. The owner of the store was greeting everyone waiting in line. As he got to ask he asked where were from. When we told him near Melbourne, Australia he got very excited and asked “Do you know my friend Guy Grosso?”. We said of course we know him we were practically neighbours. I noticed when we were in the store there were quite a few photos of famous people who had visited his store.

After the gelato I took a quick walk around the town to see what else there to get a few photos.

Our next stop was Pisa to see the famous leaning tower. Before I got there I imagine that it was a tower standing all by itself. I was surprised to see a beautiful cathedral right beside. After we got a few tradition tower shots we sat around people watching until it was time to go.

It was a very long day by the time we got back to the apartment so we just got some pizzas on the way home.

Tomorrow we head for La Spezia so that we can visit the Cinque Terre. I’m really looking forward to that.