M:

If you can imagine a delightful hill town, looking down on wherever you live and only a 20 minute bus ride away - you begin to get the idea of Fiesole. That's where we spent most of Thursday.

I guess like most places in Italy, it has a long history. In this particular case the Etruscans were the occupants from 800 or 900 BC, then the Romans around 283, where it was a place where young men were sent to learn the arts of augury - the process of reading signs - not boring holes! In the early middle ages it rivalled Florence, and there were often fights between them, but by the 11th century it was conquered by the Florentines and became a kind of Florentine holiday resort. Today it has a fine Roman Theatre, a great collection of ceramics by the della Robbia clan, a duomo whose insides are much nicer than its outsides, and the absolute reason to go is the views down the valleys - in particular to Florence.

On the way to the number 7 bus (1 euro 20) we booked our tickets for the Uffizi on Friday. We decided to take our chances on the queues for the Accademia on Saturday. Given a booking fee of an additional 40% of an ordinary ticket and given the lack of lines in evidence so far, it seemed a sensible gamble. Time will tell.

The guidebooks are full of warnings about pickpockets on the number 7, but I think they have all gone on holidays. The biggest risk seems to have been the gangs of old ladies or the groups of foreign students who got off before we reached the Piazza Mino near the summit of Fiesole's hill.

We took our time and wandered up the main street trying to get oriented, then chose the scenic walk along the ridgeline to look down on Florence. Somehow the haze seems appropriate and the Duomo still manages to make its presence felt despite both haze and distance. There is a sort of warm glow that attaches itself to the whole town when seen from here.

It was well and truly coffee o'clock by then, so we sat down in the Piazza and observed a group of people running round and round a statue of the meeting between Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi. They were wrapping the base in what we thought might be strings of lights but turned out to be clothesline in the Italian colours. One guy had the cable in a wheelbarrow, another fed it out, a third made sure it was tightly wrapped on the base in straight lines, a fourth seemed to be sending out good thoughts, a woman brought pastries, children ran around after the barrow - and eccola - it was done. We discovered it was done by a group of local artists in support of Italian unity. (The seccessionist Lega Nord is not far away ... ). Check the photos.

We spent an enjoyable couple of hours in the historical museum, the 2000 seater amphitheatre (indeed very well preserved) and then the Brandini museum, with a small but rich collection of largely religious art, including the aforementioned brightly coloured ceramics of the della Robbia family (see earlier link).

Lunch beckoned, and today we were eating out. Trip Advisor had recommended a place called i'Polpa. The Italian grammar seems strange in the name, but the food was fantastic. Anne had ribollita - a close cousin to the "acqua cotta" from Orvieto followed by roast chicken and potatoes (because the potatoes looked so good!) and ricotta cheese cake. I had pici (a kind of pasta) with sausage meat, cinghiale in dolce forte, and cantuccini (biscuits)with vin santo. The cinghiale is wild boar, and the dolce forte is an extraordinary concoction of sweet and sour tastes including both vinegar and chocolate, pan forte and pepper. The house red was a 5 year old red called Terra Terza. No views, no fancy prancing. Just a kitchen that we could watch and good sensible service. Mmmmm!

After a lunch like that we needed to take the afternoon rest after the short ride back to Florence. We need to confess that it lasted quite a while! When we felt that we could roll back out again, we decied to take a look at something we had seen advertised on the bus. (Buses are great places to find stuff out.)

It is called F-Light - Florence Light. (The link is in Italian - sorry) It is made up of the very tasteful street decorations for Christmas as well as some video projections. We don't quite have it all sussed out yet, but we did stumble across a very powerful show projected on the walls of one of the buildings along the Piazza della Signoria- a show with a message about human solidarity.

Having started to watch the second series of Rome (even having left there) we couldn't resist another episode! For some reason the tv here can deliver us BBC news but not all of the local channels. Anne is delighted that I can't watch a show that may conceivably make Deal or No Deal look like brain surgery - Avanti un Altro. Check the site if you dare.