Where poets go to die...

 I had been looking forward to seeing Florence for months.  Florence is the city where English poets went to die.  Keats died there.  Elizabeth Barret Browning died there.  At least one other person I can't remember at present also died there.  I know Byron visited for a while.  I was looking forward to seeing this famously beautiful city which attracted so many poets.  I found it incredibly disappointing.

The day in Florence we had scheduled in our itinerary dropped us in the heart of the old town - where the tourists come in droves and the Italians, Indians and Africans gather in droves to take their money.

Indian and African immigrants apparently try to make a living in Italy by selling baubles to anyone foolish enough to step off a bus and stand still for more than three seconds.  They also have great difficulty hearing, because it doesn't seem to matter if you say "no" (or even, "go away"), they will stand around thrusting their nick-nacks at you until you leave or another bus turns up.  This is, at least, better than the Italian beggars, who will cross themselves continuously and talk earnestly (and incessantly) about their bambini, as if invoking both God and children is a magic formula that can make you forget that you have said "no" several times already.

I have a policy about giving money to people on the street.  If you aren't playing a guitar, I don't have any change.  I'm willing to be flexible about the kind of activity you are performing (I saw a great example of some chalk artists doing their thing in Florence, and I gladly threw money in their hat), but you need to be doing something more than just sticking out your hand.

I found the streets of this part of Florence oppressive, and the Uffizi Gallery, while interesting, suffocating.  It was lovely, up until the point where I decided I had seen enough and I should leave.  I thought the sign that pointed to the cafe, toilets and exit was an indication that, seeing as I was near the cafe and had just used the toilets, I was somehow near the exit.  I kept following the signs that pointed to the exit...  And kept following them... and kept following them...

I found myself travelling through room after room of exhibits of things that would probably have been beautiful and fascinating, if I wasn't getting increasingly desperate to get out of the building.  It just went on and on for ever.  I would begin to suspect that I had actually passed the exit and was now in a different part of the building entirely, when I would see another sign encouraging me to keep going.  I started to feel like was trapped in a labyrinth full of art, antiquities, and three hundred thousand pictures of the Virgin Mary (almost all of them looking like she was either bored or depressed).

Just when I was starting to feel as depressed as the pictures of the saints I had seen (why do they all look miserable?  And why does St Sabastian keep turning up in weird places, looking somehow bored by being magically transported to the birth of Christ?), I found the gift shop.  "Huzzah!" I thought, believing I had finally found the exit.  Except, when I followed the signs, it took me to another gift shop.  And then another.  It was the museum that never ended.  I found myself on the verge of shouting "let me out!  Let me out!" by the time I finally found a door that lead onto the street.

Then I didn't really have time to get further out from the tourist-trapping inner streets.  I decided to come back the next day during my "free time" instead of going to Lucca, just because I wanted to give myself a chance to see the beautiful city that I had been told was here.  I hired a bike and rode around for a bit, and I found the gardens (that aren't free) to be quite wonderful... but in the end I think I would have preferred to see Lucca.  I didn't find the Florence I was looking for.