Here's the San Lorenzo market, full of leather jackets, bags, scarves, clothes, hats, gloves, masks and a hundred other things you didn't know you wanted...
And here's the wonderful indoor food market, full of enticing smells and sights... this stall has the most amazing selection of hams, salamis and other mouth-watering goodies....
and then there are other, less enticing ones, for squeamish people like me.... ducks with their heads on....
whole sheep's heads....
but the Florentines don't like waste and make sure they get the best from everything they buy and eat.
We puffed and panted our way up 414 steps, right to the top of the Campanile. Here's the view across the city, out past the dome of the Duomo....
across the rooftops to the Palazzo Vecchio...
where we later went to see Damien Hirst's celebrated diamond skull, For the love of God.... (which we weren't allowed to take photos of...)
And then over the Arno and up the hill for a picnic of ciabatta, prosciutto and mozzarella, sitting on a bench outside the monastery where you can look down on the city, as people have done for centuries....
Then back to Grom for ice cream, where the queue never seemed to be less than 30 people....this is an aerial view taken from our hotel bedroom window where we kept watch, waiting for the queue to go down so we could run downstairs before anyone else came.... I must have eaten half my body weight in ice cream.... totally sublime.....
and finally back to the Arno at dusk, standing on the Ponte Vecchio, watching the swifts and bats soaring and diving between the arches of the bridge, catching supper....
Waking up each morning to the sound of the bells and to this amazing view of the Duomo, right outside the bedroom window, opening up the shutters and not quite being able to believe that this was right there, so close you could almost touch it....
And so, Firenze, until the next time....
Arrivederci....
Looking lovely as ever, Basketgirl. Apart from the dead stuff, perhaps :)
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