Sonya Wilson's Blog

Time to rumble and ramble.  I was planning to be in Florence (Firenze) for 2-3 days and then head to Paris, but thanks in part to the volcano I ended up languishing in Florence for eight days, which was fine with me since I wanted to spend more time exploring and working on my unique Italian/Spanish/English language hybrid in Italy, and I had started to get a bit nervous about going to Paris not even knowing how to ask where the bathroom was in French.

Florence is full of history and is a great place to visit.  There are museums, galleries, ornate historic buildings, beautiful views, great food, etc.  I will say, though, that it’s too touristy for my taste.  I admit that I was a contributor to this aspect, but it appears to the casual observer and to any other type of observer and probably to everyone else in the universe that the economy in Florence is built around tourism.  I heard that for every native Florentine, there are five tourists in the city at any given time.  It’s full of shops selling basically everything.  That’s fine, because we outsiders are the ones who decided to flood their city with ourselves and our bad shopping habits, but what got to me was the vendors with cheap souvenirs setting up shop outside, rows of vendors one after the other in heavily traveled areas, each selling the exact same junk.  As if we have nothing better to do than browse and buy useless miscellany all day long.

Browsing and buying gelato all day long, however, is another matter.

I did experience a dash of ennui wandering around by myself for eight days, but there was always more to see and do.  A few photos:

Piazza del Duomo (the dome is in the background)

From inside the dome

View of Santa Croce (church building on the left) from the dome

View from the south side of Arno River

View of Arno River and Ponte Vecchio from Piazzale Michelangiolo

Maritime pine trees (pini maritimi) as a backdrop for the cemetery Cimitero delle Porte Sante, on the grounds of the monastery Chiesa de San Miniato al Monto

Part of the wall of Forte Belvedere; view from Piazzale Michelangelo

Gazebo just south of Arno River by Ponte alle Grazie

Ponte Vecchio, a famous bridge and shopping area. First built in Roman times, it was destroyed twice by floods and rebuilt for the last time in the 14th century, with subsequent changes to the protruding buildings.

View facing west from Ponte Vecchio; Santo Spiritu church building

Random cool-looking tree on some random street

Beautiful city, isn’t it?  Now I should include some shots of city life.  Here’s a good one:

This is a toilet.  I know this because an Italian girl used it after I was finished staring at it.

Wandering around trying to find your way at night was also an experience.  Streets did nifty, unexpected things, like end all of a sudden and branch off into multiple streets.

Villa degli Strozzi branches into Via della Spada, Via Del Sole, and Via della Bella Donne

Painter (watercolor) in Piazza del Duomo

Sidewalk chalk artists by Porta Rossa

Next day; almost finished

Can I end a post about Italy without showing a picture of food? This was one of my late evening snacks, of course with olive oil and balsamic vinegar...

This entry was posted on May 7, 2010 at 3:43 am and is filed under Travel. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.