I’ve now just woken up to the morning of day 3 in Firenze. The sun’s starting to come up over the sea of terracotta roofs outside my window and I’m starting to consider the days plans. Yesterday was another amazing day. I literally wandered the streets for hours and got totally lost. In my opinion, getting lost is one of the most important things you can do when you travel and visit foreign cities. Everytime I’ve unintentionally ended up in some back street, it’s been a magical experience and yesterday was no different. I don’t even have a map of Florence nor have I even tried to get my hands on one since I arrived.
I wandered in to an area where the local students hang out and finally the laneways were quiet, and a sense of peace hung over the city. Parts of Florence have been completely overrun by tourists and it’s not always easy to escape. Speaking the language makes it easier as I can wander in to areas where I know they won’t be likely to speak English.
Having said that, I did of course visit the 2 main tourist churches – I’l Duomo and Santa Crocce. The interior of these churches is amazing. Filled with ancient frescos depecting renaissance scenes and religious stories. The fresco in I’l Duomo is spectacular. It is painted on the underside of the dome and is the largest single fresco in the world. It’s over one acre in size and depicts something similar to Dante’s inferno with the different levels of heaven and hell. At the top are the important figures who look down at levels of angels then finally demons who are torturing some other poor souls. See the gallery below for my photos of this.
So today I’m deciding what to do. I’m at the point where I really need to escape the tourists so I’m going to do a day trip out of florence to one of the nearby towns… Probably Siena. I’m thinking of hiring a Vespa and riding there. I’ve done this in the past but it was with a group and even then I remember getting lost over and over. So I’m not sure if it would be less stressful just getting the train…
Anyway, as always below are some pictures and information on my wanderings yesterday.
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