18 February 2024 – Florence Part 1

Miles driven today = 55

Total Miles to date = 1,359

Florence (or Firenze locally), Pisa and the port of Livorno are linked by a toll free motorway, the “Fi-Pi-Li” Superstrada. So, having found our way around our old friend the Pisa Aqueduct and made a superfluous tour of a trading estate courtesy of Google Maps, we joined it.  It’s not as smooth as you would imagine, especially on the raised sections where the expansion joints created crashing jolts which had me concerned that the crate of Birra Moretti I have in the garage may not be entirely intact by the end of our journey.

But we made it unscathed into the outskirts of Florence, at which point I decided that it would be prudent to fill up with diesel at a relatively cheap for these parts €1.849 a litre.  Well I got very confused.  I put my debit card in and my PIN number as you usually do but no diesel was forthcoming and on checking my banking app it seemed I had been charged €100.  Of course, being a Sunday there was nobody around to query the situation with but it eventually transpired that with there only being one payment terminal for all four pumps I’d pressed the pump selection button at the wrong time and as a result I ended up paying to fill up the young lady’s scooter next to us.  She was long gone by the time we realised what had happened but thankfully the actual bill was only €7 so ultimately the lesson wasn’t too expensive to learn.

We’ve done quite a lot of sightseeing over the last few days so our plan for today was to have a bit of a break and get the camping chairs out.  But we are basically in a car park which isn’t particularly relaxing in its ambience so we decided to walk down the hill towards the Arno River where we saw there are some extensive gardens, the Giardino Boboli.

The main entrance to the gardens is via one of the arches of the Porta Romana.  It’s not actually Roman but it does date back to the 13th Century.  You have to pay €6 to get into the gardens but for €14 you also get entrance to the art galleries in the Palazzo Pitti, so we thought we would give that a go.  At that point our plans for a relaxing afternoon went completely out the window.

The Giardino Boboli are huge and we only really walked the central path.  You could spend all day exploring all the little side gardens and the many statues that embellish the planting.  One of the first that we came across was this statue from circa 1780 of two guys playing a game of “Civetta”, although to me it looked more as though they were pointing and having a chuckle at the parakeets in the trees above.

This was the Meadow of the Columns surrounded by skeletal trees.

The Island Basin with its central Fountain of the Ocean.

We than had a long uphill slog up a wide path which gradually got steeper and steeper as you neared the top, where the gradient is 20%.

At the top is this sculpture “Tindaro Screpolato” by Igor Mitoraj, the same fellow who did the “Fallen Angel” we saw yesterday near the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

We approached the Palazzo Pitti from the rear aspect and struggled to find a way in initially.

Eventually, with the help of a couple of American girls we made it into the central courtyard.  The core of the Palace dates from 1458.  It was purchased by the Medicis in 1549 and became the chief residence of the ruling families of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.  It was also used as a power base by Napoleon in the late 18th Century.

The first room we looked around was the Sala Blanca with its ornate chandeliers.

The Statue Gallery requires no explanation.

The Room of Prometheus was the Grand Dukes private apartment in Medici times.

We both felt that a lot of the artwork was quite poorly lit but the frescoed ceilings like this one in the Sala dell Iliade were quite breathtaking.

The Sala di Giove.

The Room of the Niches.

So having done a full tour of the galleries of classical art we headed upstairs to the “Modern” art section.  The first thing that greeted us was this bust of Napoleon, so it seems that the “modern” era actually started more than 200 years ago.

This sculpture is called “La Ehma” by Salvino Salvini (1824-1899).

Victor Hugo deep in contemplation.

This was the view across the rooftops of Florence from the upper galleries of the Palace.

And finally some 20th Century paintings.

We managed to find our way out the front door and had a well deserved beer in the bar opposite.  

Despite promising ourselves we would take it easy today, we still clocked up 11,500 steps by the time we had walked back to our carpark home in the southern suburb of Arcetri.  Buying bus tickets around here is a lot more problematic than you would imagine.  We plan to do a stroll around Florence’s main sights tomorrow so we’d rather not have to walk 2 miles each way on top of that.  There’s supposed to be a place just round the corner where you can get hold of bus tickets.  I just hope they are open in the morning. 

19 February 2024 - Florence Part 2