The next leg of the journey was the home of the statue of David and everything leather. Florence as well as those two well known things is also full of great architecture and around every corner is something new to see. There are heaps of shopping displaying everything Italy has to offer from venetian glass to the food delicacies of the country.
This post continues on the journey I took with my son in 2010 around the world. If you would like to see the story so far you can start it all here.
LINK: My First World Trip : Where It All Started
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So many statues everywhere you turn starting with the fake statue of David in the courtyard. We were told that due to vandals breaking off his private parts all the time the real statue of David was now in the museum under guard and this replica had been put in its place. It makes me wonder who took off with the original and what you do with it? Put it on the mantle? There were other statues of Leonardo Da Vinci and whole heap of statues with rape and pillage, or so it seemed.
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Around all the statues and other tourist sites you have police in their dress uniforms. In your own country you always have a lot of respect for the police as you have been exposed to them all your life and you know they can put you in jail and have given you the occasional speeding ticket or two.
In other countries they always seem to me like toy soldiers rather than people of authority. Not that I don’t treat them with respect and I am sure they have all the same power to put you in jail but it just does not feel the same.
The Ponte de Vecchio is one of the last remaining spanned bridges to contain shops that were once very common at the time to do. It is made of medieval stone and is a closed spandrel segmental arch bridge over the Arno river. To this my son just gave it a glance and said the usual “Ok cool” and looked away showing his disinterest.
I could ring his neck when he does that. I never went over the bridge on the race to keep up with the tour group but did get to later when I was back in Florence. Another photo of me looking slightly disheveled after taking my hat off and hastily trying to get my hair in some sort of order.
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A few blocks away are the Gates of Paradise depicting Saint John and other biblical scenes with real gold still on them, or so we were told. I am thinking maybe just gold paint or someone would have carted it off by now. The intricate detail is great and it would have been nice to see it up close but they have it locked up so the many tourist grubby hands don’t rub off all the gold I would assume.
Instead of buying a leather coat or bag that most of the people on the tour raced in to buy, I decided to buy a piece of jewellery instead. So much lighter to carry, remember I only had carry-on luggage. The issue of the luggage was sorted not long after this part of the trip where we had to race another couple to find one in a small castle town. More on that in a later article.
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The price of the leather bags and jackets cost an arm and a leg, but it did not stop most of the bus from buying jackets for the guys and handbags for the women. I am sure you could buy exactly the same thing out of the tourist area for a fraction of the price and had we not been hurried off to board the bus again I would have done just that.
It is great to experience so many towns in such a short time and tick a heap of things off your “Seen it!” list. But I much prefer my current mode of travel where we stay in the same town for a month and move onto the next town. And all of this quite easily done on an Australian pension on a budget.
NEXT STOP: Rome