Florence and Beatrice

Well here we are in Florence a beautiful city at a lovely time of year.  We left Lecce on Sunday the 10 October bright and early on the super speed rail Italia train that whisked us North for 7 hours.  We followed the coast much of the way and then headed inland up to Bolonga where we changed for Florence. The train journey was extremely smooth and fast flowing through endless tunnels wherever hills got in the way.

We arrived late in the afternoon at our hotel "Hotel Beatrice"  If Palazzo Rollo was reminiscent of "Room with a View" then Hotel Beatrice is something out of a 1950s European movie. It has been in the same family since 1953 and retains much of the same style.  The hotel is on the second floor of a large turn of the 19th Century building and is accessed by a cage lift that one can imagine Sophia Loren and Maurice Chevalier elegantly entering. Not so with us - we opened the outside cage door and loaded with great difficulty ourselves (with back packs) and two wheelie suitcases in. It was extremely tight. Somehow we pressed the wrong button and went up to the third floor where a truly elegant older lady was waiting to get in.  She was quite put out when we said we could not fit her in as well. So then on down to the second floor, but I tried to open the inner door before lift had settled and found ourselves stuck just above floor level.  After much struggling and button pressing the proprietor came out and coaxed the lift to floor level. Guess what - the inner doors opened inwards which meant we couldn't open the damn things past the cases.  While I climbed on top of one of the cases while squashing Gillie against the lift wall the hotel man eased one case out and then we all virtually fell out behind them. He was very apologetic and helped us to reception where we had to wait while he processed earlier guests.  While waiting I had to go and rescue an elderly American couple who found themselves in the same trap.

The room is past its glory and the shower occupies the space where your knees go when you sit on the toilet - but hey it all works and it has lovely old fashion wall paper.  The landlord is relentlessly cheerful.

If Rome blew us away with all its archeological Roman ruins well Florence is like one huge Art Gallery and Sculpture park.  It is claimed to have the most treasures of any one place in the world and I believe it.  The light at this time of year is exquisite and the colours of the buildings and public spaces are great.

 The challenge is the same old thing - there is so much extremely interesting stuff to experience that the brain gets tired.  The other issue is that there are hugely more tourists here than in the South so we are working our way around crowds of tour parties all trying to consume as much of the culture as they can in the few hours allocated to them.  But we also recognise we are tourists as well. 

As with Rome the bridges over the river Arno are lovely structures although it is amazing to realise that the Germans blew all of the bridges up when retreating from Italy at the end of the war with the exception of the famous Ponte Vecchio. What is great is that they have restored all of them back to their former glory.

 We have spent the day looking at the sights including the Medici Apartments and gardens and  have now come back to collapse until this evening.
Tomorrow we head back to Rome for the night and then on Thursday we fly out for 3 days in Dubai.