(continued from Day 1)… The following day brought delicious weather again so we decided to just walk into the centre with two main plans; visit the Uffizi Gallery and see the Ponte Vecchio, the famous bridge over the Arno river. Both we knew to be easily accessible from the Piazza Della Signoria which we had visited the day before.

Upon arriving in the large square, it was instantly obvious to us just how much busier it was than the previous day. Hordes of tourists of every nationality were packed into groups, taking pictures of each other standing by the statues, or huddled around a tour guide, of which at least five of every nationality and language seemed to be operating. We had already been wondering why our hotel was considerably more expensive for Tuesday and Wednesday in comparison to yesterday (Monday) and concluded that either; a) Mondays are quiet days in Florence/Italy, like Tuesdays were in Paris (the one day we tried to visit the Louvre and the one day of the week the Louvre is shut!), b) Monday had been a bank holiday and was thus quiet, or c) Tuesday and Wednesday are bank holidays and thus extremely busy. We didn’t ever work it out, but it was incredible the difference a day can make – being in the centre wasn’t half as relaxing. In amongst the increased population were plenty of school trips, with reams of children wearing matching hats forming great lines of pedestrian traffic that seemed impossible to break through, similar to waiting for all the mopeds and Vespas to pass by as one aims to cross a busy road. In retrospect, we realised that yesterday Florence had also been pleasantly child-free.

As soon as we crossed the Piazza to the front of the Uffizi we realised we wouldn’t be going inside any time soon. A huge queue extended long past the barriers that had been constructed to hold it, and was at a total standstill. Annoyed, yet strangely relieved that we weren’t feeling so desperately touristic as to feel it necessary to join the queue, we moved on. I can’t even begin to imagine how hectic and impaired the experience inside would have been.

Just beyond the Uffizi came our first view of the Arno river – very bland looking, dirty and green, not dissimilar from the river running through Pisa. In both cases it seems an utter shame, as they are both wide waterways, accompanied on each side by pedestrian walkways, and intersected by numerous bridges which would all make for a wonderful range of vantage points from which to enjoy the view if only the rivers were being maintained a little closer to their magnificent potentials. That said, Florence does a hands-down far, far superior job of presenting the Arno than Pisa did. Where Pisa’s bridges were merely means of getting from one side to the other, Florence’s bridges are architectural masterpieces, works of art in themselves.

The most famous of all these is of course the Ponte Vecchio. The most interesting of first impressions was the row of small houses on either side of the bridge, that having been constructed and repaired at numerous and different times now have a picturesque variety of shapes and colours when viewed from near the Uffizi as we first did. But the bridge is best known for its history (built 1345, the oldest bridge in Florence) and its culture (on the bridge itself the passage is lined either side by tons of tiny but expensive jewellery boutiques, to the extent that it shines with a glimmering yet almost empty sense of materialism). Everything is crammed together so tightly on the bridge that one loses a sense of whereabouts one is on the bridge – you get on it, are suddenly enveloped in uncomfortable and sweaty crowds, feet are shuffled about in unison, and once you can breathe again you find yourself standing on the other side of the bridge (or, if you’re unlucky and followed the wrong flows of shuffling feet, back where you started).

On the other side of the Arno we saw the Piazza Pitti, a named square that seemed to serve only as a blank sloping courtyard to a bland and uninspiring-looking museum. We were looking for an access point to get up to the gardens on the south of the Arno which enjoyed awesome views over Florence, so having found some steep streets we assumed we were getting closer, walked our way up them and shortly came across some rewardingly-placed signs that confirmed we were going the right way, the Boboli Gardens our target. Such optimism was quickly destroyed when we found the gardens and were expected to pay €9 each for the privilege of taking some postcard-view photos. Very frustrating after such a tiring and sweaty trek up such an incline – no surprise that the tall walls in the surrounding streets had been constructed specifically so that one has to pay to enter the gardens in order to be able to access the amazing views at all. Dejected, we trudged back the way we had came.

(see Day 3 for more!...)