Quite hard to understand why the English had to change the names of Roman cities if they are not that difficult to pronounce. Ferenze because Florence (although to be fancy you would pronounce it Floraanze), Toscana because Tuscany, Roma became Rome… et cetera, et cetera.
So here we were in ‘Floraanze’ and what a beautiful city although not as clean as I remember from many years ago. The hotel was rather lousy; the worst one of the trip although one gets warned time and again of the unpleasant little surprises when it comes to Italian hotels. What you pay for is not always what you get. After we got quite lost even with Garminia (she likes the correct address and postal code) and had a pizza at Pizza Man (thrown in was a glass of champagne) we got back to the hotel to find there was no hot water. Don’t do this to me!!!! So we had to be moved and that was to the room for disabled (which they said was the best in the hotel – hmmm, now we know how good the rooms were) which at least had some hot water.
Although the hotel said it provides parking, that was not true either, you park between blue lines @ €1 an hour, except when they wash the street. And that night they were going to wash the street which means we had to look for parking elsewhere (like everybody else, even residents who may park on the white lines (no, I cannot explain the logic of blue vs. white) and then walk and walk and walk!
Florence is the home of the famous statue of Michelangelo’s David, the marble statue of 5.17 meters housed in the Galleria dell’Accademia since 1873 but some crazy twit attacked it with a hammer in 1991. It is true the proportions are not quite true to human form as the head and upper body are somewhat larger than the lower body and the hands are also larger….. Possibly (though we would never know for sure), because the statue was originally intended to be placed on a church façade.
All over Italy (and Europe), churches are most important and these are of course the most exquisite of all the buildings one can find.
So here we were in ‘Floraanze’ and what a beautiful city although not as clean as I remember from many years ago. The hotel was rather lousy; the worst one of the trip although one gets warned time and again of the unpleasant little surprises when it comes to Italian hotels. What you pay for is not always what you get. After we got quite lost even with Garminia (she likes the correct address and postal code) and had a pizza at Pizza Man (thrown in was a glass of champagne) we got back to the hotel to find there was no hot water. Don’t do this to me!!!! So we had to be moved and that was to the room for disabled (which they said was the best in the hotel – hmmm, now we know how good the rooms were) which at least had some hot water.
Although the hotel said it provides parking, that was not true either, you park between blue lines @ €1 an hour, except when they wash the street. And that night they were going to wash the street which means we had to look for parking elsewhere (like everybody else, even residents who may park on the white lines (no, I cannot explain the logic of blue vs. white) and then walk and walk and walk!
Florence is the home of the famous statue of Michelangelo’s David, the marble statue of 5.17 meters housed in the Galleria dell’Accademia since 1873 but some crazy twit attacked it with a hammer in 1991. It is true the proportions are not quite true to human form as the head and upper body are somewhat larger than the lower body and the hands are also larger….. Possibly (though we would never know for sure), because the statue was originally intended to be placed on a church façade.
All over Italy (and Europe), churches are most important and these are of course the most exquisite of all the buildings one can find.
1 comment:
Stunning!
Post a Comment