Italy, 6 cities, 15 days.

Sienna and the crazy Palio We arrived here on the 29th on the afternoon train from Florence. Plenty of time to stroll the short distance into town from our hotel and begin to work out both the layout of this essentially medieval town and sort out the way the race works.  After three days in Siena I'm not sure we have too firm a handle on either of those things.  We didn't use the same route back to the hotel twice but did have fun getting lost.  The town is quite stunning.  The Duomo or cathedral is at the top of the hill and streets radiate out and down from there with another network of narrow streets which sort of follow the contours of the hill.  The Campo - a huge steeply sloping square is part way down the hill and it's in this square where the race is run.   We were fortunate to be able to see the four trial races, two per day, which precede the main event.   All were exciting.  The trial races allowed us to get our bearings a...

Florence - last day On this our last day before heading on to Sienna we completed our tour of the city. We abandoned the planned trip to the Duomo.  The queues were huge, too long and too hot.  We covered that church as the main part of our previous day trip to this city.  We visited the other huge church complex, Santa Maria Novello, the one near the railway station.  Again it didn't disappoint.  The quality of art in these buildings is simply stunning.   Some photos below taken by me don't begin to do justice to the subject.  Follow the link to their web site for more info. https://www.visitflorence.com/florence-churches/santa-maria-novella.html We finished off with a late meal in a Trattoria located in a small side street.  Looked a bit like the one in that Disney animation, Lady and the Tramp.  The meal was great, then off to get ready for our next train journey, from Florence to Siena.  Florence has been hard wor...

Florence doesn't disappoint We are finding that the amount we can do in any given day is limited by how much walking our feet can take.  Yesterday was the Ufitzzi, today was the other one, the Palazzo Pitti.  Our apartment is reallly close to this one but we started off with a long walk through the Boboli Gardens, a large ornamental garden with a full set of fountains and ancient statues in the grounds of the palace.  That took us up to lunch time and then a tour of the palace.  There was a bit of a panic as I managed to loose my phone but the staff at the palace were great and found the lost phone in record time. This is the palace - pretty large and this is just the front elevation.    The collection of art is quite astounding both in quality and quantity.  Far too much to take in but we did see our fair share of work by Canaletto, Tintereto, Carivaggio.   The modern art gallery on the top floor has a good display of impressionist wor...

Bucciolini Palace We are now sorted for Florence.  Our apartment is in a large old Palazzo a short walk from the river Arno.  The building is pretty remarkable.  Access from the street is via a pair of large wooden doors.  The apartment which is on the first floor, is furnished with antiques.  The living room has frescoes on the ceiling and the two side walls.  The weather today is hot and sunny however the apartment, with it's high ceilings and thick stone walls is cool and quiet. This morning we made the tour of the Ufizzi gallery.   A huge collection of art covering many centuries and styles.  Works by Tintoretto, Caravagio, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci abound.  To minimise queues we had bought out tickets at home and had booked an 8.30 arrival.  Once in we headed past most visitors and sort of toured in reverse.  That worked pretty well and we managed to see pretty well all the exhibition roo...

Verona - art and elegance Three churches, once castle, an amphitheatre and the Lambrirni tower but not a godola anywhere. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Verona.  I new about the Shakespeare connection from Two Gentlemen of Verona and of course Romeo and Juliet which were set in this ancient city.  Our hotel was just outside the medieval city walls which in turn are one boundary of the huge central square.  That made the walking just about bearable.   One side of the square has many restaurants covering  a range of  budgets from self service to really expensive.  It’s elegant.  Even the self service one has white linen table cloths.  We didn’t venture beyond the square for food.  The backdrop of the roman ampitheatre was too brilliant to miss.  Pizza again.  The Venice pizza place has a Pizza Bart Simpson on the menu.  Didn’t have that in Verona though but the pepperoni was great.    We did mana...

Verona city no 3 We arrived yesterday lunchtime.  First time here and it's impressive.  Our hotel is just outside the ancient city walls, a short walk from the biggest square in Europe.    In the square is a huge roman ampitheatre built in 89 ad and still in use today.   It's huge.  Seats 22000, more originally as the outermost ring was damaged in an earthquake and removed many centuries ago. Right now they are setting it up the stage and the scenery for the opera festival.  We bought a ticket for the tour and saw the roadie guys assembling the everything.  Because of the design they use a tower crane to get the sets in and out, Ampitheatre at night and here they are setting up for a production We managed to catch Juliet's house yesterday and spotted a statue of Shakespeare on the way back to our hotel.  Our time here is limited to just two nights so we heed to cram a lot in today.  The book says that the churches have s...