Florence – a tale of two cities (well 2 journalists to be precise)

Florence to many a visitor has too much pomposity for its own good.  Well any city that can boast of sons like Michelangelo, Dante and Machiavelli then you can see why.  This view of Florence is misguided – the Renaissance city needs to be explored to appreciate its beating heart.  So that is our task today.  Hire a car from Pronto: The Italian car hire specialists and we have 12 hours to report back on what we find.   Hailing from Italy but not Florence the first thing we observe is the mix of population renowned for being hearty and non conformist but in their slip stream – eternal romantics – as you would expect as Florence is set in the lush rolling hills of Tuscany.  The bi-product – a wonderful Florence that has been at the heart of a civil and cultural revolution.    No guns or sword drawn today so we have no problems that about the car we hired from Pronto being damaged – but we did have the excessive covered. 

The Pronto Car Hire litmus test for a city is to ask a local – at random – to suffer a ‘tourist’ and give us their recommendations on what to see and do in Florence.  What a joy!  It was if the 3 we asked worked for the Florence tourist board.   The recommendations were amazing from the expected – you know the Ponte Vecchio etc to the best place for espresso!  So much so and to the probable (joking annoyance) of Garry that manages Pronto car hire in Florence we are going to split our article into 2 reports.

Garry here – lol:  I would expect no less but you two make sure that Florence is given the adulation it deserves.

PS – don’t forget where you parked the car in Florence you Roman reviewers (I have it out next week – BTW how did you get an A3 convertible – I need to speak to Janice in Rome – lol)

Florence Trip – A customer’s review

There are only a few people who can accidentally stumble upon such perfection on their travels. One of ours happened on our first visit to Florence. We arrived late in the day in the car we had hired.  After setting into our hotel and enjoying a superb meal at Toscano we started strolling, on a wonderfully warm, moonlit evening, in searching for the Arno in Florence.

My friend Jim was on a going on about how there couldn’t ever ever be a site that awed and astounded him as much as the Duomo in Milano. Well I knew Florence had it secrets.  Just as he was about to repeat this claim we turned the corner and there it was. Bathed in the moonlight, and hardly any of people around, the marble facades of the Duomo held our gaze, daring Jim to not change his mind there and then! But change it he did. (Mind you, we never again saw the Duomo or its piazza as bereft of the throngs of tourists that usually crowd the area).

In the next few days in Florence, we cooled off in the shelter of the huge cathedral; we explored the inside, fascinated by the walls, ceilings, and the magnificent dome. We climbed the campanile and climbed up into the dome to get a better look at the fabulous Dantesque murals. (I love those murals with devils and demons taking the evil to hell!). But nothing will ever compare with that first glimpse of this extremely beautiful Cathedral.

An interesting story is the history of the Duomo in Florence is the competition to determine who would build the actual dome. When Brunelleschi was asked how he proposed to build it he replied “If I told you how, then you would know how to do it”. An archeological wonder for all time, the dome was open for over one hundred years, while Masses were conducted with birds among the congregation and rain pouring in.