2006-01-07: Florence, blah

We finished Florence today. It is a city. There are many churches, quite a few that charge to go into them. There is a river with a big bridge. The bridge is covered in stores selling gold, and tourists struggling to get a clear path for a photograph. The river bank with a good view of the bridge is filled with hawkers selling the same goods (all at 50% off the unlisted price). There is an old citadel that is a low bastion with some buttresses and a cover charge to enter. There are narrow streets of buildings towering overhead, often covered in scaffolding, and full of hawkers selling goods in street markets. Many of the churches also are full of old Italians going to Mass. We even saw an active confessional for once. Tourists filled the main Florence city centre so that it was impossible to get a little bit of free space.

Pink Cows!	Bridge over the river in Florence	A shopping precint	Open air museum
GW stockist	Holy mini-cows	Last look at the apostles	Parking problems

Honestly there isn't much to recommend this city. Some of the days highlights include:

• The day started with a noisy troop of Japanese leaving the hotel at 6am, and a smell of cigarette smoke following them out.
• There is a tradition on the main bridge to leave a padlock with your name on it on a gate around a bust of someone. Oddly enough no vendors nearby sold locks.
• Edyta haggling a guy down to 15 Euro for a new purse. He may have gone lower, but we set the price and went for it.
• We found another store selling GW (along with role-play, cards and anime) as we were chasing church tower to church tower.
• At long last I had to use a squat toilet, with a separate bucket for paper. Luckily that end of the business wasn't needed. The toilet didn't flush.
• Edyta wanted to eat a snack of pasta in an Italian place and we ended up in an American road bar themed restaurant. I took pot luck on my order and got cheese melted onto the plate with thin ham over the top.
• The bus home was stuffed well over safety standards when we got on, and remained as such as more people boarded.
• We paid 36 euro for a meal that looked like it was Bilo components thrown together. Then we had to wait longer than it took to serve us and to eat to pay. As compensation we got a free sip of some alcohol, which I left. And we were ripped off 1 euro from our change (so they got a tip I wasn't planning on leaving). To be fair they did have to deal with a family of Japanese through a translator, but still the food was very ordinary, the service slow and the price extreme.