Day 7 - 22 April, 2005: San Gimignano, Florence

Another driving day today. We drove down the coast almost to Pisa, then turned inland into the heart of Tuscany. Before arriving in Florence, we really wanted to go to San Gimignano to see the medieval towers. Can I just say that Tuscany is beautiful. Even in the early spring, before the Sunflowers or poppies are in bloom, the Tuscan landscape is exactly as I pictured it. We actually passed by Florence (I could see the dome on the Cathedral) on our way down to San Gimignano. Our NAV-lady did a fantastic job guiding us down to San Gimignano. It was a bit of a pain to find a parking space, but we did, and took a few hours to stroll around the old town; which was lovely. We got some paninis for lunch and ate on the steps of the cathedral. The weather was perfect; probably low 70's and sunny. We couldn't spend too much time in San Gimignano, just long enough to get some local Vernaccia white wine and take some pictures, before we had to head back to Florence for our appointment at the Uffizi.

On the way back to Florence, I got to experience the Italian version of pay at the pump gasoline. No credit cards (debit only), but you could feed paper currency into the machine and pick the pump and go. Absolutely no attendant on duty. Unfortunately, I didn't pick the right route-type for the NAV-lady, and she guided us almost into the middle of Florence before we emerged on the road up to Fiesole. Of course, the address for our hotel (the Villa Fiesole) wasn't exactly in the NAV system, so I had to pull off and make some guesses. Angela hopped out of the car and took some pictures of the hillside villas while I figured it out. We finally found our hotel, checked in, and promptly headed into Florence for our Uffizi tour.

Honestly, Florence was a little disappointing. Aside from the obvious historical significance of being the birthplace of the Renaissance, Florence was just another big city. Which is to say that it was noisy, crowded, and dirty. The Uffizi was impressive; the Duomo was impressive; the sculptures were beautiful; the street vendors and beggars were oppressive; the air quality was terrible; the crowds were huge (and we weren't even there in the high season).

After dinner in a nice little ristorante, we found an Internet Cafe and bought our train tickets to Imola for our trip to the Formula 1 San Marino Grand Prix on Sunday and to try to book a reservation to the Accademia Gallery for tomorrow. We bought the train tickets just fine, but we couldn't get a reservation to the museum less than 1 day in advance. We'll have to try our luck in the line.

Our hotel is lovely. It's situated on a hillside in an ancient Etruscan town called Fiesole. Our room was a "Junior Suite," and offered a nice, spacious bathroom, plenty of closet and shelf space for us to at least partially unpack (which will be great since we're staying here for 4 nights), and, wait for it, a 20" LCD flat-panel TV. Of course the cable signal is terrible, but at least I get to keep caught up on current events with BBC World and CNN International. There's a World Snooker Championship on EuroSport (German), so I can get my "sports" fix, too.

Our plan tomorrow is to try to get into the Accademia, check out Santa Croce and its Leather School, and then drive down to Siena for the afternoon and for dinner.