Florence 9 November

The ship actually stops at the port of Livorno.  The plan today was to do a Princess tour which is called "Florence on your own".  The idea is that they take you to Florence on a bus, drop you there, and pick you up a few hours later.  They are very light on details such as "what time will we arrive in Florence" or "where will we be dropped off" but since the excursion started at 8:00am I hoped we'd be in Florence by 10:30 or so.  So, I booked a guided tour at 11:30 with a group called City Wonders - who we have used before - to show us the Duomo - the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

View from the bus - snow on the Appenines:

We had a bit of a rocky start.  Of course, there's a tour guide even on a 'drop you in the city' tour like this, and she managed to horrify quite a few of us by saying that we'd only have 3 hours in Florence.  And, although you expect that they'll encourage you to shop at the stores they've picked out, I was appalled when she basically claimed that you'd almost certainly end up in hospital with food poisoning if you didn't eat at their recommended restaurant.

Anyway, it turns out that we had quite a lot more than three hours.  We got into Florence a little after 10:30, and even though we went through the "presentation" in one of their shops, we managed to find our way to the City Wonders pick-up spot with no drama.  And their tour was just excellent.  Of course being out of peak tourist season it wasn't quite as crowded but the queues were still really long, and with this tour we skipped them all.  And, we only had two other people on the tour, and went into places that most people aren't allowed.  The guide explained so many interesting things about the church and the history of Florence; as I said, I was really impressed.  Just one example - this is a painting of Sir John Hawkwood, which she used to explain both his story and his relevence to Florence, and the use of perspective in paintings:

As part of the tour, we could have climbed right up to the top of the dome - 464 steps - but I wasn't really up to that.  We did get up to the terrace though (157 steps), and got some wonderful views over the city. 

To give an idea of how much further we could have climbed, this is a view from the terrace up to the dome.  Just above where the ribs of the dome meet at the top,you can see some tiny figures.  To get up there, you climb inside the dome - there is an inner and outer skin, and you climb up between the two.

 

The tiny gold ball on top of the tower above:

is actually big enough for three people to stand inside!  It has fallen twice, once in the 1400s and once in the 1600s, both times after being hit by lightning.  Both times, it landed in the plaza in exactly the same place - they've actually put a marble marker in the plaza to show where:

The tour officially ended in the cathedral, but the tickets that come with it allowed us to go into the crypt underneath.  It's not really a crypt; it's the remains of earlier churches that have been built on top of over time.
This is the tomb of the architect responsible for the dome:

And some other parts of the crypt:

Afterwards, we found a little cafe where we purchased some (non-food-poisoned) lunch.  Then, we asked the maps app to show us the museums in the area - there are dozens! - and aimed for the Galileo Museum.  This was a treasure - heaps of really impressive displays.

We then just wandered back to the meeting area and were driven back to the ship, with a bit of sight-seeing around Florence on the way.  All in all a great day, and Florence is now added to my list of cities I'd love to go back and see.