I initially planned on spending a full day in Florence (which incidentally is called Firenze there, slightly confusing if one does not know it beforehand!), but a train strike in Italy disrupted my plans a bit, and I ended up doing Pisa and Florence on a single day. That of course did not do justice to Florence (Pisa just has the leaning tower, so an hour was more than enough), but at least something was better than nothing!
Italy does not feel like a typical European country in many ways, rather reminded me of india, not only for the history part - the train strike for a day, too many people everywhere and not at all organized, long lines for train reservations or entering any muesum, hugely overpriced stuff near tourist attractions. In fact too long a line prevented me from going atop the leaning tower in PIsa, and resulted in me hurrying through the world famous Uffizi gallery in Florence a couple of hours. Like any other Italian city, Florence skyline is dominated by cathdrals. Walking through narrow roads, suddenly the enormous Duomo cathedral opens up in front of you, and the sheer size of it is almost unbelievable. There are others too, some of them are equally impressive - but somehow the first sight of Duomo left me awestruck.
The photos are here.
(I expect to post the "eternal city", Rome tomorrow)
4 comments:
Enjoyed the photographs! I particularly liked the captions "Green" (the one with the tree branch bending on the river; not sure if I recall the caption correctly) and "Blue and Green."
Thanks Durba :)
Yeah, that was one of the pictures which was in a sense unrelated to the "city". Lots of pictures from train rides, like that one you mentioned, are nice by their own rights, but when I remember the trip in real time, they seem so pale!
Pictures capture the place very well. I have not tarveled to Italy but being in london also gave me the feeling that I was near home. t is exciting to know that you felt Italy (Fl and P ) was like India...
Also am impressed with whatever knowledge of history your blog mirrors..
The whole Italy was...in certain respects...but one huge difference, there is an acute effort to preserve and "market" the "history, so unlike India!
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