Florence and goodbye Siena

Photos - Erith on the centre of Ponte Vecchio, a shot of some of the jewellery shops on Ponte Vecchio, one of the race horses in the Palio, one of the horse running in the final practice round.

Erith says:

Yesterday we got a bus to Florence. We looked around a bit and set off to get some food. We looked on the map and saw a nice park. When we got there it wasn't nice at all because they were restoring the church. Then we got some food and I got a Powerade. Then we walked around trying to find the toilet and saw a lolly shop. We got a big block of chocolate with hazel nuts at the bottom. We had to half it between us because it was so big. We stopped in some shops to try to find a swimming costume. We didn't eventually find one because they were all too small.

Once we did find the toilet that cost each of us 60 cents to get in. We then went to an old bridge named Ponte Vecchio. I got a charm of the Colesseum and it was 75 Euro. We went to a palace and tried to find the garden, but we had to go in to the palace to get into the garden but we didn't want to go in. Instead of going to the garden, we got an icy drink then we walked back to the bus stop and got on a bus back to Siena.

Today we went to the Campo because there was a last practice for the horse race on Monday. We were waiting for the horses to come out. When they finally did come out, they were very fast horses and the riders rode bareback. The horserace only went for 90 seconds. After the race, we went to get some coffee and I got an iced tea. I drank half of it but then I couldn't stop shaking it up.

Today I'm quite excited because tomorrow we're going to Venice. In Venice, I would like to ride a gondola.

Marcus says:

Yesterday we had a pretty quiet day - we took a bus from Siena to Florence around lunchtime, strolled around for the afternoon, then took the bus back to Siena. We wanted to see Florence, but we decided that we weren't going to line up for anything as we had neither the time nor the energy. We went past San Maria Novella, but it was undergoing restoration, so the entire front was covered. We had a bit of lunch in the shade anyway, then set off for Duomo, which was a major engineering feat at the time and is still very impressive. It was commissioned by Medici and designed by Garibaldi and was the biggest dome ever built at the time. Garibaldi designed a new way of building domes and apparently everyone was holding their breath right up until the last brick was placed.

From Duomo we walked down to Palazzo Vecchio and looked at the copy of Michelangelo's David and some of the other sculptures - all very impressive. Erith did a bit of souvenier shopping and we looked for a new swimming costume for her, but without success. We continued on to the Uffizi, then to Ponte Vecchio where we got Erith a small gold charm of the Colosseum. The jewellery shops are really amazing - they had some beautiful pieces and the prices didn't seem too high, not that I'd really have a clue. Even more amazing were the fish in the river below Ponte Vecchio - they looked like goldfish or some sort of carp, but they were the size of gropers. They were huge and there were a lot of them - very cool.

From there, we walked down to Palazzo Pitti, a huge palace with a massive garden behind. In keeping with our policy for the day, we didn't want to go into the palace, but our attempts to find a way into the gardens by other means were thwarted by the tiny streets leading in seemingly random directions. We didn't mind though - we wandered down some nice, quiet streets down by the river with our icy drinks.

We crossed Ponte Vecchio again and headed for the bus station, on a route that took us through the heart of the high-end shopping district. All the big labels were there, one shop after the next. Not being in the market for a new 600 Euro Prada handbag (my old one is still perfectly serviceable), we window shopped only. Back to the bus station and back to Siena - we were tired, but not with the fog that comes with dealing with crowds all day long. Florence is obviously an amazing place, but given the fact that we were looking for a quiet day, we were happy with the very moderate coverage we managed.

This morning, we went down to the Campo to see the last practice run of the Palio - the big race. An update on the drama of the other night for punters following at home - apparently the starter did something dodgy with the rope and the snail's horse tripped, injuring itself. The starter was immediately fired from that position he had held for many years and the reason that the contrada was so upset was that they were one of two contrade that got the horse and jockey that they wanted, so would have fancied their chances. Also the practice run is spirited, but by no means flat out, so tripping on the starting line is a bit of a freak accident. We'll be in Venice by the time they run the real race tomorrow night, but it seems likely that we'll get some information about who won.

I'm starting to panic about the amount of time we have left in Europe and the ground we want to cover. We've concluded that quality time is better than rushing around just to say that we've been places, but at the same time, there are plenty of places we want to see. I'm pretty happy that if we had to linger somewhere, we did it in Italy. I'd always wanted to come here and we really have had a great time, but now we're planning our exit. We've booked train tickets to take us to Venice tomorrow. It's about 4.5 hours from Siena and first class seats are about 73 Euro for the pair of us, which I thought was pretty reasonable. We'll probably spend 1.5 days in Venice, then head for Vienna for a day of so, then up to Poland to see Belinda - another of my sisters who is there to escape the >50 degree temperatures in the Middle East, where she currently lives.

Staying at Cel's has been fantastic - it's been great to catch up and has given us a chance to charge up our batteries a bit, as well as getting caught up on laundy. It'll be a shame to leave tomorrow, but Cel will be working anyway, so it's probably a good day. Today is a quiet one - get packed, get rested and relax before what will be a fairly frenetic period of travel. We'll have less internet access too, so we may post less frequently, but we'll see how we go.