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| St Croce Cathedral |
We were lead to a shop called Misuri where they specialise in leather and gold - only 18 carat gold here in Florence. After a sales pitch in their gold jewellery and leather goods, we had free time to look around the store and buy, or not buy, and then we had a few hours free for lunch and time for looking around.
I went for a walk and took a few pictures of the streets that interested me. I then came upon Diane - the American who's travelling with the boring American couple Peter and Sharon. Surprisingly, she was eating her lunch by herself.
I sat and had my lunch with her as she was not looking too happy. We had a very intersting chat. She was alone because Pete had said something to Sharon that she didn't agree with so, instead of saying what was on her mind, she just took herself off on her own. I found out that she often did that just to mind her own business and not interfere in the marriage.
We had a pleasant chat, then went for a walk down a street with lots of shops. Then, we noticed that there were people converging to a place at the end of the street. So, of course we had to continue down to the end of the street to see what was going on.
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| Neptune's Fountain |
We came upon a beautiful square with a fountain (which we later learned was Neptune's fountain), a great old building we later learned was the town hall which had a smaller imitation copy of the statue David at the entrance door.
As we only had about 10 minutes to meet the rest of the group at Misuri, we took some quick pictures and went back the way we came. On the way, we took a few pictures of another great building which we later learned was the Court House.
It was then time to walk about 10 minutes to the bus (buses are not allowed to park close to the town) and off to the Galleria dell 'Accademia where the original statue of David is housed.
At the entrance, we met our guide, Simone - pronounced Seemon-e - who was surprisingly wearing bright orange pants and a "hippy" white shirt. We thought he was a Hari Krishna at first but later found out that he wore the bright colour so he was easily seen.
He took us through the gallery which has four incomplete Michaelangelo marble statues. We could see how the statues came to life from the marble and learned that Michaelangelo had help from his students for these incompletes. The students would prepare the huge blocks of marble before the master set off to work.
Not so with David - Michaelangelo worked alone.
How beautiful David's statue is. And how huge. Our guide was great at explaining about the statue and also explaining that David is actually holding a stone in the hand that's upon his shoulder, and holding the handle of the sling-shot in his right hand. I actually thought it was the other way around. Some thought that he didn't have a stone at all.
We marveled at the work of art from the expression on David's face, the attention to detail of every muscle, the details of the curly hair, the veins shown in his hands, arms and neck. Quite beautiful and such skill.
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| Florence Cathedral |
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| The boar with the shiny nose |
Our next stop was walking to the Piazza del Duomo to view the beautiful Florence Cathedral which wasn't as old as the Florence Baptistry on the opposite side.
We continued our walk to the Piazza della Repubblica, past the market place to see a bronze statue of a wild boar. Apparently if you rub his snout - which is the only shiny part of him! - you will get good luck. None of us touched him.
Our guide then lead us to Piazza della Signoria - a bit of a de ja vu for Diane and I as we discovered it on our own after lunch. This is where we learned about the town hall, Neptunes fountain, Donatello's statue "Judith and Holofernes"
and the bronze statue "Perseus With the Head of Medusa".
We then walked down the same street that Diane and I walked and learned about the Court House, before meeting Simona back at the store Misuri. What a walk!!! We were all extremely tired. Then, we had another 10 minutes to walk back to the bus and on our way to Montecatini and our hotel.
Montecatini is a small spa town - kind of like Daylesford but smaller. Our hotel is quite small and old fashion. First thing some of us did was to check out the market that was just across the street from our hotel.
Dinner was at the restaurant at the hotel where I sat at a table with Jo, Paul, Cheryl, Australian Diane, boring American Pete and Sharon, James and Jean. It was quite a nice dinner and Pete and Sharon are opening up a bit more.
After dinner, as Jean hadn't been to the market yet, she left James at the hotel and we went off to the market. I had no intention of buying anything but Jean was a bad influence on me and I ended up buying a 10 Euro shirt. Jean, who was there to buy a top, didn't buy anything.
Then it was off to bed.
Tomorrow, Pisa.
