Florence

Florence or Firenze – a beautiful city. Much more laid back than Rome, lots of trees and lovely buildings. Has such a nice feel when walking around it. Apparently this is where the Renaissance period started, so many statues.

We drove to the top of a hill and took some panoramic photos.

We started our day by driving 45min into the Tuscan countryside to a gorgeous medieval  city of . On the way I finally saw Tuscany at it’s finest. Beautiful villas, vineyards on hillsides, olive groves, trees, fields of sunflowers (admittedly dying).

The town is where a lot of tour buses go, so we got there early with only one other bus. It was so nice not to have to fight the crowds. It is high up on a hill with towers and cobblestone streets, a square with a fountain. Gary (our tour guide) said parts of’Under the Tuscan Sun’ and ‘Tea with Musellini’ films were filmed around the town.

It even had a Museum of Torture!

Also there was a small gelato shop which had won the best gelato in the world competition twice, so that was a must-do stop. Yum! 3 flavours, one was blueberry and riccicota which was lovely and creamy.

After that we drove back into Florence to the market square for a shop around (and yes I finally  did some shopping – 3 tops, 2 pairs of earrings, a glass necklace and plate (Milan glass). Not bad.

Then it was an historical walking tour through the old centre, going to the political square and the religious square (beautiful and huge church of Santa-Maria ……” It has a huge dome . The whole church and dome took 140 years to finish. However the inside is very boring.

Then it was a walk down to the Acadamia to see ‘David’. OOhhh wow! Our local guide was great and made us look at it from 4 sides and explained the points of interest about it (his eyes have heart shaped pupils to give him depth). It is so big (5 metres) but so perfect anatomy-wise.

After that it was 4.30pm and we were once again tired after 8hours on the go. Back to the hotel.

6pm out for a Tuscan dinner. It was in a lovely restaurant in the hills, windy little road to get there. You got given a blue champagne that tasted a little of strawberries, then had different courses of food, cheeses, olives, bread, then pasta, then meat, then dessert. The wine was all included so naturally the party got louder and louder. A little band of 2 guitarists, saxophone and violinist came and went playing music with an old man who sang in a tenor operatic voice. (they were all older except the saxophonist). The old tenor singer would get a lady up and dance with her for a little bit, then get another one up. I said no, I would rather dance with the violinist! So he came over and sat down beside me and chatted a bit in broken English.

Bit of gossip for you –our tour director Gary (who was born in California and now lives in London) was a great friend of Simon Dallow’s (newsreader) and he was Simon and Ali’s best man at their wedding! Showed me some photos and big discussion about how Simon got to be a newsreader when he was a lawyer etc. Gary (tour man) loves NZ and has been there 3 times.

By this time the party mode was in full volume so the band just stayed and played until the tour guide (Gary) kicked us all out and onto the bus! Then it was up singing and dancing on the bus (one song was ‘Celebration’ (HNPS – you can believe I was up there dancing to Shelley Washington moves!). By the time we got back to the hotel I was rather tired from drinking 2 bottles of strawberry wine (like lolly water). However, one of our USA friends decided 1 nightcap at the bar was on the cards. OK – just one. Well 7 of us went, the New Yorkers got small wine glasses (bigger than shot glasses) of Sambuka. So it was all of us ‘Salute’ and drank.  Guess what- the NZ’rs and I other younger guy who is our ‘wannabe’ NZr (he has been to NZ on holiday, loved it and wants to emigrate there with his wife) all sculled it in one go and the Americans just sipped it! We cracked up laughing, and I said ‘enough of this sippy-sippy stuff – scull’, so they did. It all went down hill from there. Cigars came out (app. In New York you drink Sambuka with cigars), 3 more shots later the security guard came over and kicked us out! (we were outside in the hotel garden by that stage). I was just convincing our young friend that our country needs him (computer whizz-kid) and it was a great place to bring up his yet –to –have babies! Trump was trashed and cor.porate politics were condemned – all in all a very late night!