Saturday 1st June

Another wet day in Perugia with the surrounding valleys obscured by cloud & rain, such a shame for the tourist trade. After a great breakfast Jane packed us up & we went for our final guided walk but had to abandon it for lack of time. Returning to the hotel we met Victor, our new friend from yesterday who had just left us a note at the hotel. He was inviting us to dine with him tonight but unfortunately we will be in Florence. It was great to see him though & he promised to keep in touch. We left the hotel & took the Mini metro down to the station on the plain below & caught our train to Florence. It had been a wonderful time in Perugia & it is now easy to understand why so many people rave about Italy, its towns & its countryside, even if not about its weather.

The train was fairly empty & we had a good ride to Florence where it was dry & about 10˚C warmer than Perugia. We found our B & B after a couple of wrong turns & were greeted by our host. It is about 1k from the railway station in a fairly quiet area.

We set out to explore & walked down to the main area to the Duomo, the cathedral which is a quite unusual building faced in green & white marble with a tall bell tower next door. The effect for d*** was that it was a mixture of the Albert Hall, the V & A & his memorial in London, not at all to his taste as it is all exquisite workmanship but totally over powering. Moving on we bought reservations to visit a couple of galleries tomorrow & then crossed the famous Ponte Vechio, a bridge with jewellers shops on either side, unfortunately mostly crammed with masses of golden, somewhat gaudy material. On the other bank we wandered in & out of many leather shops selling clothing & hand bags. The shops here seem to range from fairly to unbelievably, expensive but there are plenty of them & plenty of tourists too.

We followed a road up from the river to see a view of Florence but unfortunately it was the wrong road so we missed it completely. Returning to the city after a drink we found a very smart cafe & had a wonderful meal of Ayulian food before returning to the B & B.

Sunday 2nd June

Another hard day in the office. After a good breakfast we were off to the Uffizi Gallery or the 9.30 start, taking in a church on the way & grabbing 2 audio guides in we plunged. It is gigantic & it was far too much for one serve. At about 12 Jane messaged d*** to suggest we return the audios as we were due at a 2nd museum at 1.00 & eventually this we did although d*** had only done 1 floor out of about 2.5. The audio was wonderful & the presentation & scholarship is phenomenal but it is all too much. So much of the material was from the 13th-17th centuries illustrating the development of painting in Italy & Europe in that period. Most of the material had been gathered in Italy from various religious centres presumably by fair & foul means but the Medici tribe were serious collector for 100s of years so perhaps we should be grateful to them.

Leaving the gallery we each had a poor but expensive snack & were into the Galleria di Academia for another dose of serious culture acquisition. The gallery's main feature is that it has Michelangelo’s 'David’ which he completed at 24 but equally interesting to us was the 4 uncompleted works that it holds which are fantastic in that one can see how he went about things. They were commissioned by a Pope who died & are still quite fascinating to see. The rest of the works are mainly 13th -15th century Italian religious works although they do have about 80 Russian icons.

Tiring of the artistic efforts we left & went looking for a handbag for Jane in about 10 shops before giving in & setting off for the Duomo, which was rather a disappointment internally & then a church of the Holy Spirit, on the other side of the river, which naturally was closed. Jane urged that we should wait until 4pm & was right as ever as it opened & it was well worth it with wonderful 14th & 15th century altar paintings in 33 side chapels & a Michelangelo carved wooden crucifix.

Returning we visited 2 more churches & in one somebody was playing the organ beautifully. Its main feature was that the arches were trimmed & draped with extraordinary embroidered fabric pelmets, a totally unique feature to us.

Looking for a final basilica we stumbled on a street market where most of the stalls were selling leather goods, bags, jackets or both. d*** found a leather cap & this seemed to release Jane’s buying inhibitions as she found 2 leather handbags & a rucksack before the buying frenzy could be controlled. We checked out the basilica, founded in 398 AD but somewhat altered since & walked back to the station to buy tickets for tomorrow’s run to Venice. After a fairly ordinary feed we returned to the B & B tired but satisfied.