Highlights of Tuscany–Florence

Thursday morning and at 0930 we wandered out of the hotel heading for the railway station for a day in Florence. We had a guide waiting to meet us at the station and as half the day would be free time we were shown where to meet at ten to four for the train home.

A short walk from the station and we were standing in the first square near the Basilica Di Santa Maria Novella. From here we all queued up and paid our €1 to use the loo.

Opposite the Basilica Di Santa Maria Novella is the obelisk of Corsa dei Cocchi, it was erected in 1608 and replaced the two wooden pyramids that formed the turn posts for horse racing in earlier years, It is supported on 4 turtles for some unknown reason.
We slowly made our way to the centre passing this building, like many others it has rings fixed to the walls, we were told these were for tethering horses, but they are a good 8 feet from the ground.

In the centre we saw the Baptistry, Battistero di San Giovanni and of course the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. This is the third largest church in the world.

The Baptistry	Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore

Unfortunately to go inside these buildings require tickets bought in advance online.

This area is considered to be an open air museum with all the statues dotted around the place. This one of David stands in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Town Hall of Florence.

As we walked round the City we saw these small doors in the walls of buildings. In the past a traveller could knock on the window above and be given a glass of wine through the door, today they expect you to hand over a few Euros for that glass of wine and some cafés make a feature of it. 

Although Florence has several large open squares in the City, where they have built, they have used every available inch of land, like here where two roads meet at an acute angle, there is a building using the land right to the point.  

Our guided walk ended on the Ponte Vecchio bridge, home to 43 jewellers shopsThese shops still have their traditional overhead wooden shutters that would have been there when they were butchers shops, but of course today, what would have  

   been open shop fronts, are fully glazed. As you can imagine the bridge is thronging with people.
The river like most rivers around the world this year had very little flow on it and was a nice muddy brown colour as can be seen from these views both up and down stream. 

We found a nice little café down a side street with just 3 tables on the side of the road where we had lunch before making our way back to the railway station via a visit to the river further down stream

On our way to Florence I had noticed some old steam railway engines just lying in a siding beside the main line. I was able to get a couple of photos on our way home.