Arrived in Florence to the biggest hostel we have stayed in. Definitely required ear plus with some young, brash Americans around including American soldiers off on R+R and trying to seduce the American girl in our room. Once again thankful to be travelling with Nic.We arrived in Florence via a stopover at Piza with the obligatory shots of the tower taken.
Spent our first day at the Ufizi gallery with Botticelli's Venus from the Sea and Spring which were amazing for this uncultured antipodean. However some of the earlier art was a little lost on me – more about this in Rome. To escape from the city (again), and to satisfy a desire to get back on 2 wheels, we hired a couple of bikes and caught a train south towards the village of San Gimigmano a well preserved hill top medieval village that had a case of too many short men who built quite a few towers for which the village is now known for.
Unfortunately while standing stationary in train station I displayed my usual coordination (that most resembles a hedgehog with ataxia), and fell on top of the bike that I was holding. Proceeded to drip vast quantities of blood from my ankle that had met something sharp. Italian loo paper down a sock stemmed the flow and probable certain death from blood loss and we managed to cycle to the village and then back to Florence a mere distance of 110km although we think that the odometers were acting Italian as they also said we were cruising at 32km/hr while cycling a gradual uphill on these steel framed hybrids with no clipless pedals! Nic and google maps think it was more like 70km. The bike ride also included a bike past an American memorial of troops killed in WWII – interesting it was that night we shared a dorm with the very alive, loud and young American soilders.
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