Our hotel for Florence was an odd one - check in was only between 9.30am - 12 midday, so we got ourselves on the 8.30am train headed for Tuscany. We arrived about 10 am and on the way to the accommodation, realised we need to get money out to pay for it. Not sure if there would be any ATMs on the way, Dan went back into the station while I wanted on the footpath with our mountains of luggage. He took an absolute age - apparently there were no ATMs in the station but he had managed to get the appropriate cash from a money exchange booth.
We only had a short distance to walk, thankfully, and the check in was easy enough. We were given our key but the room wasn't ready yet. Before leaving, I asked if I could use the shared bathroom (which would be the one we as a room would be using anyway) and, upon approaching, knocked and wiggled the handle, as you do. Locked, so someone was in there (they knocked back at me, which was really weird).
I waited. And waited. And waited. Probably about 10 minutes? I was about to give up when they started playing with the lock. And they turned it. And pulled it. And simply could not get it to unlock. I called through the gap, "You're pushing the key too far through - I can see it on this side." My voice alerted the front desk staff member who came over, and also tried calling instructions. The staff member called out, exasperated, "Just wait. I'll get you out." and walked away, presumably to find another key. In the meantime, the girl inside finally managed to unlock it, and so I called to the lady that it was alright and I could now pee. I was worried she would come in the whole time. I'm mentioning all this, because it's just the tip of the iceberg of how awful this accommodation turned out to be...
So it's about 10.30am and what are we to do in Florence? Plenty, but what could we do at this time? The hotel staff member had given us a bit of a walking tour suggestion, so we half began to follow that. In actuality, all I wanted was lunch: I desperately wanted to try one of the €10 lunch deals that I had missed out on in Florence the time before. On the way, I had researched a few places and I had a particular one on my list, L'Brindellone, which was situated on the non-touristy side of the river and had excellent reviews. Problem was, it was on the other side of the river, and a bit of a hike from everything else - and generally these lunch menus only happened on weekdays. Today was Friday and our only chance...
We did a short lap around Florence, we found a big indoor market (with the streets lined with leather handbags and wallets on the outside) which I had someone managed to completely miss my first time here. It was full of fruit and veg and fish and cheese and meat vendors on the ground level, and upstairs was a food court type area selling delicious looking fresh dishes. We wondered if we might come back here at some point.
From here we continued onto the Duomo, which is kind of hard to miss. It's enormous. I still thought it was as beautiful as it was the first time I saw it, and I was explaining to Dan how the inside is basically bare.
"It's inside out then, eh?" he said, and I laughed and laughed and thought that described it perfectly. We took a lot of photos here - although it's basically impossible to get the whole thing in, it's so closely circled by buildings, before moving on. As we walked around it, I noticed there was no line for going up the Duomo, and couldn't quite get my head around why this might be... I was to find out the answer a little later!
By now it was getting close to 12pm and I wanted us to make fast work to get to the lunch place on the other side of the river. Last time I had been in Florence, I had arrived at a place serving the lunch menu at 12.30 and I was turned away because they were already full. I didn't want to risk that again! We walked our way across to the other side of the river, looking across the way at the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge. We walked and walked and walked and finally got there, down an unassuming back alley in a fairly residential area. It was 11.50am.
We approached the door, and saw the opening hours listed. Opening at 12.30pm. What? I started having a slight meltdown because I was so hangry and annoyed that another one of my researches had ballsed up. I looked it up again, and online (on it's own website even), as well as Tripadvisor and Google, the opening time was 12pm. So we decided to wait.
A little old lady stood nearby us in the shade on the other side of the street. At 11.55am, she said something to us, and trotted across to the door. Looking around, I realised that there were a few (mostly old) people lurking around, so we wondered if maybe it did still open at 12pm. The little old lady went up to the door, knocked and opened it. We could see someone inside, and as she did so, they exchanged some words, and the person inside closed the door hard in her face and loudly turned the locked key.
We were shocked! That was quite rude. Maybe it doesn't open until 12.30? The clock ticked over, and more people started moving towards the door, which was soon unlocked. While we had been the first ones there, we were about the last inside as the flood of people entered, each getting a big hug and kisses from the staff. I would say that that little old lady goes there every Friday with her big group of friends, and the locking in her face was just a joke.
We were seated at the back of the restaurant and handed the a la carte menu. It didn't mention anything about the lunch menu, but some of the tables had a printed piece of paper on it. I stood up and asked if I could grab one off another table, which they obliged. So rule number one: ASK for the lunch menu, they aren't going to give it to tourists naturally! The a la carte menu looked amazing, but it was very much not cheap!
A pinched looking gentleman came back and asked for our order. We had been completely unable to read the menu because it was handwritten, and in Italian, and mostly illegible to us. So we said we would like the lunch menu, and what was on it? He slightly exasperatedly explained everything on the menu - I should back track. These lunch menu's are fabulous: you usually get 2 courses and maybe a coffee for €10 (although this was much better - as I will get to!). Therefore there were about 3 things to choose from for first course (pasta) and 4 things to choose from for 2nd course (meat).
I chose the ragu for my first course and went to choose the second, when he said that he'd come back and ask us about that when we finished the pasta. He seemed in a hurry, so he turned around quickly after taking our pasta order, and I asked after him, "May we have some wine?" He simply replied, "yes," and continued on.
I sat there looking at Dan and just laughed - what is going on?? This was so clearly a local institution. One other set of tourists arrived, however they ordered from the a la carte menu (probably didn't know about the lunch menu!). Our waiter returned with a half carafe of red - and I absolutely adore that he didn't give us a choice on the matter! We had both ordered meaty, tomatoey dishes for the pasta therefore we get red wine. He asked if we would like water, and I hesitated, to which he replied "It's free" so of course we accepted that offer.
Behind Dan sat the massive table of old people - about 10 of them, and the moment they had sat down they were being served. Either they eat the same thing every week or they had pre-ordered, but they were up and out of there within a good 30 minutes! It wasn't long before our pasta arrived - I imagine it's all preprepared out the back ready to go for the onslaught. My. Ragu. Was. Lifechanging. It was delicious, and almost the same size as a normal pasta dish. Where was I going to fit the main?
We both enjoyed our red wine and pasta immensely, which was also served with bread. I wondered how much of all this was included as many lunch deals don't include wine or bread, but we decided to just go with it and pay whatever it comes to at the end. As our brisk little waiter collected our dishes, he asked for our main choices. I went with the beef stew - I had wanted to try bistecca alla fiorentina, florentine steak, but it was prohibitively expensive, so I thought that maybe the stew might have been made from some of the same stuff, who knew. Dan went with rabbit with olives.
As the waiter turned to leave, he said "Sides?" We were thrown, we didn't even know what the choices were, so he reeled them off and we went with a salad and some fries that we would put in the middle and share. Clearly a local bar - you need to know these things already to know to ask for them! It again wasn't long before our dishes returned - giant succulent pieces of beef falling apart in my stew, Dan's delicious rabbit. Super hot crispy fries, and to be fair the salad was just lettuce but we put lots of olive oil and pepper in it and were quite glad for the fibre!
Our waiter turned out to be a comedian - as he delivered Dan's rabbit, he said, "And here is your cat...I mean, rabbit!" Which elicited quite a bit of laughter from us and a wry tiny smile from the waiter. We had cracked him now, and he was very pleasant to us for the rest of our time there!
We seriously had no idea how much this meal was going to come to. We finished off everything (except a little bit of the lettuce), and sat, wondering what would happen next. The waiter returned, and Dan complimented him on his cat. "We make very good cat around here!" he quipped, before asking us if we wanted coffee, and assuring us that it was included. Of course, so in short order 2 espressos appeared at our table. My golly, this had been a big meal! We polished off the strong coffee and deciding this probably was the last thing we would be given, made our way to the bar to pay.
€20. All of that cost us €20 total. Everything had been included in the €10 lunch deal. We received, essentially, 2 glasses of wine each, water (which is a big deal in Europe, most places it's not free!), bread, pasta first course, meat second course, two sides and 2 coffees. We were very happy when we walked out of there, and had loved the whole bizarre experience!
The day had gotten very hot, so we stood in the shade and put some sunscreen on. As we weren't far from the Ponte Vecchio bridge, the famous bridge covered in shops, we decided we would walk across it back to the other side. On the way, we passed a gelato shop that we couldn't resist having a peak in. It had a huge array of flavours, maybe about 30, and every one looked amazing. They were expensive but we had seen worse, and after some dallying decided to go for it! We were still so full and didn't know where to put it, but whatever. Yolo! For a change we got our icecreams in waffle cones because they just looked so magnificent. I went with a chocolate and a burnt fig flavour, and I was very, very happy.
We had to stand on the footpath and eat it down a little way as it was melting too much to try to eat and walk, dodging traffic. Soon we came to the bridge, and meandered across it, fighting the crowds to take the odd photo. I didn't really bother - the water colour is pretty horrid brown - and the shops the length of it almost exclusively sold gold jewellery. On the other side, we walked alongside the river for a few blocks trying to get some nice photos, before popping back into the backstreets of Florence, headed for the centre.
Now there were a couple of morning activities and a couple of evening activities we wanted to do, so first things first was to return to our accommodation and try to figure all this out. Back there, we sweltered in our room. The beds were pretty damn uncomfortable, and as they were twin single beds on a spring frame, we actually just put the mattresses on the floor and lent the frames up against the wall. That's much more comfortable.
And here I discovered I had made a grave error in planning Florence - I took for granted that I had been here before and knew everything without checking first. One thing we wanted to do was climb the Duomo. Turns out, and this explains the lack of queue - you now have to register online for a time slot to climb it. And you can only do it on weekdays. And of course this was Friday afternoon with no spaces left. I felt awful! I had gone on at length about this to Dan and now we couldn't do it. He was very good about it thankfully. He had researched places with a view in Florence and it turned out that the view he wanted to see was at the Piazza de Michelangelo - which was something we already planned to do.
While we were here, Dan also looked up the Leaning Tower of Pisa and I looked up the Accademia museum where David is housed because as we found out the hard way for the Duomo, things change. I couldn't find much information about Accademia (well, I found plenty, it was all contradictory), but I did manage to find a page that said no, you don't have to pre-book, and here are the opening hours (opening at 8.15). Dan learnt that it was highly illadvised to try to line up to get tickets to Pisa, and there were no spots available on the day we wanted them, but the next day, around 2.30pm. Ok, so the new plan was:
Get to the Accademia gallery really early, about 7.45am ish, ready for the 8.15 opening. The museum is really small, so I didn't think we'd spend all that much time in there. Then we'd make our way to Pisa for the 2.30pm climbing of the tower. The climbing hadn't been something super high up on our list of things we must do, but in the end we just decided to go for it, why not - Dan's dad had climbed it many years ago (before it's lean was stopped) and we wondered if the experience might be any different from then.
Time was passing quickly, and I was still kicking myself about the Duomo, but we needed to get a wiggle on and get ourselves up to the Piazza de Michelangelo to get a good spot for the sunset viewing-tainment! Near our hostel was a supermarket, so we raced around there, getting ourselves a squishy cheese to go with the crackers we were still hauling around, and a container of mixed fruits. We weren't very hungry after our big lunch! Of course we also grabbed some wine - it had to be red because there were no cold drinks, and literally nothing in Italy is a screw cap! So we returned to our favourite from the night before and grabbed not one, but two beautiful cartons of 1L boxed red wine, and set off up the hill.
Naturally, I got us a bit lost (and I'm pretty sure I made the same mistake the time before). I was aiming to get up the top for about 6pm - it was a Friday night and I wasn't sure how many people might come here after work as it was such a warm evening. I set a cracking pace - and towards the end there's about 200 stairs. I flew up the stairs, every person we passed was one less that would try to take my place at the top! Sweat was dripping down my face, and eventually, puffing, we reached the top. I knew I had gone fast but I didn't realise that Dan had been struggling to keep pace with me - I was literally racing!
We got to the top and plonked our stuff on a wide section of the barrier. Dan was a bit perturbed that there was no seating space here, and he did a bit of a reccie to see if there was a better, more relaxed spot to go. Many people were sitting on the stairs to our left, and there was a second level beneath us, but neither would be so good for photos so he returned to where I was. We staked our spot and very glad we did - by the time sunset finally rolled around, the crowd was about 3 deep.
As is my want, I started chatting with the people next to us. First up was a couple from America on the honey moon - they weren't going to stay for the whole sunset performance as they had a dinner reservation, but we gave them some tips for Florence and they gave us some tips about America for when we visit in a few weeks. We bid them adieu, and another girl took their place. She pushed her way in, and her hair kept tickling my arm, and I was pretty unimpressed. Thankfully she left after a little while and a lovely British couple took their place.
The sunset was lovely. The sky was quite hazy at first, so it took some time to get going, but soon everything was beautifully covered in a yellow glow. We drank the first bottle of our boxed wine, and ate our squishy cheese. We were very well prepared. The feet weren't getting too sore - I think the wine helped that. Just before the sun set, there was a commotion on the level beneath us, and we could see a man encouraging the crowd to cheer. Turns out, he had proposed right there, and had gotten a "yes". Cheers! However, with the British couple, we judged their relationship - I have a feeling this proposal may have come out of the blue, and we decided that maybe they hadn't been together very long. After all the commotion died down, he went off to talk to strangers and left her just standing there. They also didn't look particularly lovely-dovey as you might expect from a newly engaged couple, but these are all judgements and hopefully they have a very happy life together!
Sunset was about 8.50pm (late!) and our next cheersing was to the sun! Congratulations sun, for lowering and disappearing like you have done every day for billions of years. At this, the British couple left, and a couple of young British girls took their place. The crowd was slowly thinning - there were still beautiful colours in the sky so Dan and I wanted to stay and keep taking photos. We started talking with the girls, and ended up standing their for hours! Dan and I had our second bottle of red, while they worked on a couple of bottles of bubbly, and we ate cheese and talked until it was pitch black. It was fantastic!
Eventually I needed to wine escape, and I knew the public toilets beneath us were €1. I wander down there to learn they are shut. Oh dear. This is not good. I return, and one of the girls and I set off towards the bar hotel where they should have facilities, but we would probably have to buy a drink to use them - a pee and a pint, I tend to call it. On the way, we spotted another public toilets sign so veered off - nope, we had missed this one's closing time by about 10 minutes. Fuck. Seriously considering popping a squat at this point - by the way, have you noticed that I talk a great deal about toilet escapades? I feel they really end up being little adventures of their own. Anyway, we thought we'd risk the bar, sauntered past the guard like we were supposed to be there, and sauntered out again. Success! And relief. Mostly relief.
We continued drinking and chatting for a little while longer, as the girls realised they had missed the last train back to their accommodation. They decided to pub crawl it back, and so we all set off back down the hill. Dan and I bid our adieus near our accommodation, and wished them safe travels into the night. Tomorrow was going to be a big day with an early start, and after drinking a litre of red wine each this was going to make things interesting...
And so we went to bed, or so I hoped. This is a story for the next blog, I think.
Til next time,
xx
We only had a short distance to walk, thankfully, and the check in was easy enough. We were given our key but the room wasn't ready yet. Before leaving, I asked if I could use the shared bathroom (which would be the one we as a room would be using anyway) and, upon approaching, knocked and wiggled the handle, as you do. Locked, so someone was in there (they knocked back at me, which was really weird).
I waited. And waited. And waited. Probably about 10 minutes? I was about to give up when they started playing with the lock. And they turned it. And pulled it. And simply could not get it to unlock. I called through the gap, "You're pushing the key too far through - I can see it on this side." My voice alerted the front desk staff member who came over, and also tried calling instructions. The staff member called out, exasperated, "Just wait. I'll get you out." and walked away, presumably to find another key. In the meantime, the girl inside finally managed to unlock it, and so I called to the lady that it was alright and I could now pee. I was worried she would come in the whole time. I'm mentioning all this, because it's just the tip of the iceberg of how awful this accommodation turned out to be...
So it's about 10.30am and what are we to do in Florence? Plenty, but what could we do at this time? The hotel staff member had given us a bit of a walking tour suggestion, so we half began to follow that. In actuality, all I wanted was lunch: I desperately wanted to try one of the €10 lunch deals that I had missed out on in Florence the time before. On the way, I had researched a few places and I had a particular one on my list, L'Brindellone, which was situated on the non-touristy side of the river and had excellent reviews. Problem was, it was on the other side of the river, and a bit of a hike from everything else - and generally these lunch menus only happened on weekdays. Today was Friday and our only chance...
We did a short lap around Florence, we found a big indoor market (with the streets lined with leather handbags and wallets on the outside) which I had someone managed to completely miss my first time here. It was full of fruit and veg and fish and cheese and meat vendors on the ground level, and upstairs was a food court type area selling delicious looking fresh dishes. We wondered if we might come back here at some point.
From here we continued onto the Duomo, which is kind of hard to miss. It's enormous. I still thought it was as beautiful as it was the first time I saw it, and I was explaining to Dan how the inside is basically bare.
"It's inside out then, eh?" he said, and I laughed and laughed and thought that described it perfectly. We took a lot of photos here - although it's basically impossible to get the whole thing in, it's so closely circled by buildings, before moving on. As we walked around it, I noticed there was no line for going up the Duomo, and couldn't quite get my head around why this might be... I was to find out the answer a little later!
By now it was getting close to 12pm and I wanted us to make fast work to get to the lunch place on the other side of the river. Last time I had been in Florence, I had arrived at a place serving the lunch menu at 12.30 and I was turned away because they were already full. I didn't want to risk that again! We walked our way across to the other side of the river, looking across the way at the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge. We walked and walked and walked and finally got there, down an unassuming back alley in a fairly residential area. It was 11.50am.
We approached the door, and saw the opening hours listed. Opening at 12.30pm. What? I started having a slight meltdown because I was so hangry and annoyed that another one of my researches had ballsed up. I looked it up again, and online (on it's own website even), as well as Tripadvisor and Google, the opening time was 12pm. So we decided to wait.
A little old lady stood nearby us in the shade on the other side of the street. At 11.55am, she said something to us, and trotted across to the door. Looking around, I realised that there were a few (mostly old) people lurking around, so we wondered if maybe it did still open at 12pm. The little old lady went up to the door, knocked and opened it. We could see someone inside, and as she did so, they exchanged some words, and the person inside closed the door hard in her face and loudly turned the locked key.
We were shocked! That was quite rude. Maybe it doesn't open until 12.30? The clock ticked over, and more people started moving towards the door, which was soon unlocked. While we had been the first ones there, we were about the last inside as the flood of people entered, each getting a big hug and kisses from the staff. I would say that that little old lady goes there every Friday with her big group of friends, and the locking in her face was just a joke.
We were seated at the back of the restaurant and handed the a la carte menu. It didn't mention anything about the lunch menu, but some of the tables had a printed piece of paper on it. I stood up and asked if I could grab one off another table, which they obliged. So rule number one: ASK for the lunch menu, they aren't going to give it to tourists naturally! The a la carte menu looked amazing, but it was very much not cheap!
A pinched looking gentleman came back and asked for our order. We had been completely unable to read the menu because it was handwritten, and in Italian, and mostly illegible to us. So we said we would like the lunch menu, and what was on it? He slightly exasperatedly explained everything on the menu - I should back track. These lunch menu's are fabulous: you usually get 2 courses and maybe a coffee for €10 (although this was much better - as I will get to!). Therefore there were about 3 things to choose from for first course (pasta) and 4 things to choose from for 2nd course (meat).
I chose the ragu for my first course and went to choose the second, when he said that he'd come back and ask us about that when we finished the pasta. He seemed in a hurry, so he turned around quickly after taking our pasta order, and I asked after him, "May we have some wine?" He simply replied, "yes," and continued on.
I sat there looking at Dan and just laughed - what is going on?? This was so clearly a local institution. One other set of tourists arrived, however they ordered from the a la carte menu (probably didn't know about the lunch menu!). Our waiter returned with a half carafe of red - and I absolutely adore that he didn't give us a choice on the matter! We had both ordered meaty, tomatoey dishes for the pasta therefore we get red wine. He asked if we would like water, and I hesitated, to which he replied "It's free" so of course we accepted that offer.
Behind Dan sat the massive table of old people - about 10 of them, and the moment they had sat down they were being served. Either they eat the same thing every week or they had pre-ordered, but they were up and out of there within a good 30 minutes! It wasn't long before our pasta arrived - I imagine it's all preprepared out the back ready to go for the onslaught. My. Ragu. Was. Lifechanging. It was delicious, and almost the same size as a normal pasta dish. Where was I going to fit the main?
We both enjoyed our red wine and pasta immensely, which was also served with bread. I wondered how much of all this was included as many lunch deals don't include wine or bread, but we decided to just go with it and pay whatever it comes to at the end. As our brisk little waiter collected our dishes, he asked for our main choices. I went with the beef stew - I had wanted to try bistecca alla fiorentina, florentine steak, but it was prohibitively expensive, so I thought that maybe the stew might have been made from some of the same stuff, who knew. Dan went with rabbit with olives.
As the waiter turned to leave, he said "Sides?" We were thrown, we didn't even know what the choices were, so he reeled them off and we went with a salad and some fries that we would put in the middle and share. Clearly a local bar - you need to know these things already to know to ask for them! It again wasn't long before our dishes returned - giant succulent pieces of beef falling apart in my stew, Dan's delicious rabbit. Super hot crispy fries, and to be fair the salad was just lettuce but we put lots of olive oil and pepper in it and were quite glad for the fibre!
Our waiter turned out to be a comedian - as he delivered Dan's rabbit, he said, "And here is your cat...I mean, rabbit!" Which elicited quite a bit of laughter from us and a wry tiny smile from the waiter. We had cracked him now, and he was very pleasant to us for the rest of our time there!
We seriously had no idea how much this meal was going to come to. We finished off everything (except a little bit of the lettuce), and sat, wondering what would happen next. The waiter returned, and Dan complimented him on his cat. "We make very good cat around here!" he quipped, before asking us if we wanted coffee, and assuring us that it was included. Of course, so in short order 2 espressos appeared at our table. My golly, this had been a big meal! We polished off the strong coffee and deciding this probably was the last thing we would be given, made our way to the bar to pay.
€20. All of that cost us €20 total. Everything had been included in the €10 lunch deal. We received, essentially, 2 glasses of wine each, water (which is a big deal in Europe, most places it's not free!), bread, pasta first course, meat second course, two sides and 2 coffees. We were very happy when we walked out of there, and had loved the whole bizarre experience!
The day had gotten very hot, so we stood in the shade and put some sunscreen on. As we weren't far from the Ponte Vecchio bridge, the famous bridge covered in shops, we decided we would walk across it back to the other side. On the way, we passed a gelato shop that we couldn't resist having a peak in. It had a huge array of flavours, maybe about 30, and every one looked amazing. They were expensive but we had seen worse, and after some dallying decided to go for it! We were still so full and didn't know where to put it, but whatever. Yolo! For a change we got our icecreams in waffle cones because they just looked so magnificent. I went with a chocolate and a burnt fig flavour, and I was very, very happy.
We had to stand on the footpath and eat it down a little way as it was melting too much to try to eat and walk, dodging traffic. Soon we came to the bridge, and meandered across it, fighting the crowds to take the odd photo. I didn't really bother - the water colour is pretty horrid brown - and the shops the length of it almost exclusively sold gold jewellery. On the other side, we walked alongside the river for a few blocks trying to get some nice photos, before popping back into the backstreets of Florence, headed for the centre.
Now there were a couple of morning activities and a couple of evening activities we wanted to do, so first things first was to return to our accommodation and try to figure all this out. Back there, we sweltered in our room. The beds were pretty damn uncomfortable, and as they were twin single beds on a spring frame, we actually just put the mattresses on the floor and lent the frames up against the wall. That's much more comfortable.
And here I discovered I had made a grave error in planning Florence - I took for granted that I had been here before and knew everything without checking first. One thing we wanted to do was climb the Duomo. Turns out, and this explains the lack of queue - you now have to register online for a time slot to climb it. And you can only do it on weekdays. And of course this was Friday afternoon with no spaces left. I felt awful! I had gone on at length about this to Dan and now we couldn't do it. He was very good about it thankfully. He had researched places with a view in Florence and it turned out that the view he wanted to see was at the Piazza de Michelangelo - which was something we already planned to do.
While we were here, Dan also looked up the Leaning Tower of Pisa and I looked up the Accademia museum where David is housed because as we found out the hard way for the Duomo, things change. I couldn't find much information about Accademia (well, I found plenty, it was all contradictory), but I did manage to find a page that said no, you don't have to pre-book, and here are the opening hours (opening at 8.15). Dan learnt that it was highly illadvised to try to line up to get tickets to Pisa, and there were no spots available on the day we wanted them, but the next day, around 2.30pm. Ok, so the new plan was:
Get to the Accademia gallery really early, about 7.45am ish, ready for the 8.15 opening. The museum is really small, so I didn't think we'd spend all that much time in there. Then we'd make our way to Pisa for the 2.30pm climbing of the tower. The climbing hadn't been something super high up on our list of things we must do, but in the end we just decided to go for it, why not - Dan's dad had climbed it many years ago (before it's lean was stopped) and we wondered if the experience might be any different from then.
Time was passing quickly, and I was still kicking myself about the Duomo, but we needed to get a wiggle on and get ourselves up to the Piazza de Michelangelo to get a good spot for the sunset viewing-tainment! Near our hostel was a supermarket, so we raced around there, getting ourselves a squishy cheese to go with the crackers we were still hauling around, and a container of mixed fruits. We weren't very hungry after our big lunch! Of course we also grabbed some wine - it had to be red because there were no cold drinks, and literally nothing in Italy is a screw cap! So we returned to our favourite from the night before and grabbed not one, but two beautiful cartons of 1L boxed red wine, and set off up the hill.
Naturally, I got us a bit lost (and I'm pretty sure I made the same mistake the time before). I was aiming to get up the top for about 6pm - it was a Friday night and I wasn't sure how many people might come here after work as it was such a warm evening. I set a cracking pace - and towards the end there's about 200 stairs. I flew up the stairs, every person we passed was one less that would try to take my place at the top! Sweat was dripping down my face, and eventually, puffing, we reached the top. I knew I had gone fast but I didn't realise that Dan had been struggling to keep pace with me - I was literally racing!
We got to the top and plonked our stuff on a wide section of the barrier. Dan was a bit perturbed that there was no seating space here, and he did a bit of a reccie to see if there was a better, more relaxed spot to go. Many people were sitting on the stairs to our left, and there was a second level beneath us, but neither would be so good for photos so he returned to where I was. We staked our spot and very glad we did - by the time sunset finally rolled around, the crowd was about 3 deep.
As is my want, I started chatting with the people next to us. First up was a couple from America on the honey moon - they weren't going to stay for the whole sunset performance as they had a dinner reservation, but we gave them some tips for Florence and they gave us some tips about America for when we visit in a few weeks. We bid them adieu, and another girl took their place. She pushed her way in, and her hair kept tickling my arm, and I was pretty unimpressed. Thankfully she left after a little while and a lovely British couple took their place.
The sunset was lovely. The sky was quite hazy at first, so it took some time to get going, but soon everything was beautifully covered in a yellow glow. We drank the first bottle of our boxed wine, and ate our squishy cheese. We were very well prepared. The feet weren't getting too sore - I think the wine helped that. Just before the sun set, there was a commotion on the level beneath us, and we could see a man encouraging the crowd to cheer. Turns out, he had proposed right there, and had gotten a "yes". Cheers! However, with the British couple, we judged their relationship - I have a feeling this proposal may have come out of the blue, and we decided that maybe they hadn't been together very long. After all the commotion died down, he went off to talk to strangers and left her just standing there. They also didn't look particularly lovely-dovey as you might expect from a newly engaged couple, but these are all judgements and hopefully they have a very happy life together!
Sunset was about 8.50pm (late!) and our next cheersing was to the sun! Congratulations sun, for lowering and disappearing like you have done every day for billions of years. At this, the British couple left, and a couple of young British girls took their place. The crowd was slowly thinning - there were still beautiful colours in the sky so Dan and I wanted to stay and keep taking photos. We started talking with the girls, and ended up standing their for hours! Dan and I had our second bottle of red, while they worked on a couple of bottles of bubbly, and we ate cheese and talked until it was pitch black. It was fantastic!
Eventually I needed to wine escape, and I knew the public toilets beneath us were €1. I wander down there to learn they are shut. Oh dear. This is not good. I return, and one of the girls and I set off towards the bar hotel where they should have facilities, but we would probably have to buy a drink to use them - a pee and a pint, I tend to call it. On the way, we spotted another public toilets sign so veered off - nope, we had missed this one's closing time by about 10 minutes. Fuck. Seriously considering popping a squat at this point - by the way, have you noticed that I talk a great deal about toilet escapades? I feel they really end up being little adventures of their own. Anyway, we thought we'd risk the bar, sauntered past the guard like we were supposed to be there, and sauntered out again. Success! And relief. Mostly relief.
We continued drinking and chatting for a little while longer, as the girls realised they had missed the last train back to their accommodation. They decided to pub crawl it back, and so we all set off back down the hill. Dan and I bid our adieus near our accommodation, and wished them safe travels into the night. Tomorrow was going to be a big day with an early start, and after drinking a litre of red wine each this was going to make things interesting...
And so we went to bed, or so I hoped. This is a story for the next blog, I think.
Til next time,
xx
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