Final Europe trip, Post 4: More about Florence

On our second day in Florence, we set off for some local markets. They were in a park that we reached by walking a fair way alongside the river, and we had quite a successful shopping excursion! Delle got a shirt, and I got two shirts and a €10 carry-on-size suitcase. It came in rather handy as I could use it as a portable chair for the rest of the day! (Not to mention that it also came in pretty handy when we flew all of our purchases back to Australia!) The first photo below is of the view at breakfast that morning from the eating area at Camping Michelangelo, where we stayed...













Later on we came across the Florence Cathedral, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. This was a huge, grand church building with an exterior of white, green and pink marble. It also had a large dome that Delle lined up to climb to the top of! Below are some of my photos of the outside of the Cathedral, and some of Delle's photos of the amazing view of Florence from the top.

















We also found a couple of smaller markets, at one of which there was a bronze statue of a pig - a fountain that was no longer in use. The pig's snout was very shiny and smooth, and we observed some tourists rubbing its snout and throwing money into its mouth. To find out what it was all about, just now I looked up the pig and discovered that there is a little-known Hans Christian Andersen story about it ("The Metal Pig" or "The Bronze Pig"), which begins like this...

"In the city of Florence, not far from the Piazza del Granduca, runs a little street called Porta Rosa. In this street, just in front of the market-place where vegetables are sold, stands a pig, made of brass and curiously formed. The bright color has been changed by age to dark green; but clear, fresh water pours from the snout, which shines as if it had been polished, and so indeed it has, for hundreds of poor people and children seize it in their hands as they place their mouths close to the mouth of the animal, to drink..."



Click here if interested in reading the rest! We purchased a few ties at this market (the one in the second photo below) - including yours, Dad! Nearby, there were some pavement artists hard at work on a chalk painting to raise money for their yearly permit fee to "occupy public space", which had just been increased to nine times its previous amount!! :O









That night we had tea at a restaurant across the road from Camping Michelangelo, and the next day we were off to Lucca, near Pisa, via the beautiful Tuscan countryside - which I'll tell you all about next time!