Florence

 

In October, just prior to startring hte PPH course, Amanda and I went to Florence for a short but wonderful holiday.  We stayed in a great hotel right in the middle of town - www.albergofirenze.net - did the Churches - the best are the Duomo (a spectacular sight, no picture can prepare you for the first view), Santa Croce (burial place of Michalangelo and Galileo), the Baptistry (astounding roof) not to mention the wonderful Medici-Ricardi Palace (for the stunning painted chapel… stunning indeed, which meant the golden Gallerie was a complete shock) and of course, the Uffizi Gallery....  And some fine restaurants, most recommended being Trattoria di Benvenuto, Via Della Mosca and I Ghibellini, Piazza S P Maggiore. 

Florence really is a wonderful place.

The extraordinary Duomo - it looks even more extraordinary in real life.  Constructed entirely from coloured marbles from the surrounding hillsides.

 

 

A Fresco from the cloisters of the Church of the Annunziata.  We saw hundreds like this in our wanderings.

 

 

 

 

 

If you do Florence on the cheap, you don't fly to Florence,

but to Pisa.  So we had to!

                                       

The Medici's built a very modest palace within Florence, nothing too ostentatious.  This is a rather beautiful formal garden from there.

 

And this, of course, the famed Ponte Vecchio

This is the river frontage of the Ufuzi, one of the great art galleries of Europe.

 

 

And all this within a stone's throw of the glorious Tuscan landscape

 

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