theatre of the absurd: florence

Thursday, 7 June 2018

Italy, part XXIV - Florence to Bologna: Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station and Freccia Rosa

Sneak peek of Bologna

I am up at a ridiculous hour for the second day in the row and I am exhausted. I don't feel as if I got a good night's sleep at all despite the fact that for all intents and purposes, I did. Honestly though, this is really tiring. I won't be able to say I'm going to look forward to the nice nap this afternoon when I get back because I don't have naps, not here anyway, but I will look forward to being able to get up of my own accord tomorrow.

Freecia Rosa, I was up at the crack of dawn to catch it. This is Italy's fastest high speed train out of all of their Freccias, operating at 300 kph. I got it cheap too, otherwise why would I buy it?

I didn't retouch most of these photos because they don't need much retouching. And there's a sneak peek of Bologna.

Cuppa coffee before I leave this city for the next

Wednesday, 6 June 2018

Italy, part XXIII - Florence (v): The Uffizi Gallery, more Piazzale Michelangelo, some more Duomo di Firenze, and more Ponte Vecchio

Once again I'm up at the crack of dawn and I'm not sure why I do this to myself but yet here we are. Tuning coffee, as you do, and drinking it out of my square IKEA mug which reminds me of the turquoise mug I drank out of, many moons ago in Hammersmith. And sleepy.

Last entry proper on Florence. I'm racing through the Italy entries because I can't wait to get to the Balkan ones. I have some absolutely gorgeous pictures of the former Yugoslavia. Even though I hurt my foot there and all that. Well, hurt isn't exactly the correct word - over-exerted it would be more accurate.

This was the third day, and I'd been walking around the city taking photos as you do. And then I decided it would be a good idea to go and visit the Uffizi Gallery, which was the last museum on my checklist for Florence. The Uffizi Gallery is known for being the housing place of most of Botticelli's works, as well as his most celebrated painting, The Birth of Venus, painted in the late mid-15th century.

The Uffizi is huge and after I was done with viewing Botticelli's finest, as well as my personal favourite Caraveggio, I was ready to go home and eat and drink and sleep. Not so, though - the Uffizi makes it really hard for you to actually find your way out, and the building's been designed so that you actually have to walk your way through all of their magnificent offerings before you're allowed to leave.

Suffice it to say that my feet were aching by the time I got back to the hostel and flopped back gladly onto the hostel sofa in the kitchen. And then about half an hour later I went downstairs to the hostel bar and met people, and talked about the sweet and the sour, as you do, whilst sipping hilariously overpriced cocktails. All in a day's work.