Tag Archives: queues

A Final Flurry in Florence

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Thursday 8 May 2025 – Jane had booked tickets for the Uffizi galleries with an entry time of 10.45, which made for a relaxed start to the day – a leisurely breakfast and then a 15-minute walk to get there. The galleries are very imposing slabs of masonry which flank a street, unimaginatively called Piazzale degli Uffizi. You go in one side, walk through galleries along it, and then cross over via a bridge to the other side before walking back along that. The best view to get a grasp of it comes, actually, from inside.

The Piazzale runs down the middle, and the entrance gates are on the right in this picture; typically one approaches the complex from the direction of the Palazzi Vieccho, which you can see in the distance. Actually, finding the right gate is the immediate challenge; we had to find Gate 3 in order to pick up our pre-booked tickets before entering through Gate 1. The signposting provided is very discreet, and it had us trawling the length of the Piazzale from top to bottom before indicating that we should have been back to the top. A friendly army chap pointed us in the right direction and we picked up our tickets with no problem, then crossed the Piazzale to Gate 1, where there were several queues.

The queues, while substantial, are very well-managed, and promptly at our allocated time we filed in through Gate 1, passed security – and equally promptly walked the length of the building so we were back at the Palazzo Vecchio end. There followed four flights of steps to get to the top gallery, which was, well, very museum-ish.

The ceilings to these corridors are amazing – every panel is different.

You make your way along this main drag, every so often being offered a side show, typically featuring the work of a prominent artist, e.g. Botticelli. So you can pile in and take a look.

The Botticelli exhibits were in more than one side room, and the main interest lay in the second room.

“Primavera” is clearly a painting of great interest, as is Venus on the half-shell.

One has to fight through towards the front to get half a chance of an unobstructed view.  As usual, lots of people were not interested in seeing a unique piece of classical art unless they were in the foreground.

Harrumph.

At the end of the main drag, the corridor turns a sharp right and then right again to take one back down the other side. It’s here that one can see the galleries in the first photo in this post; also, since one is by now at the river end of things, you get a superb view of the bridges of Florence

with the Ponte Vecchio nicely in the foreground.

On the way back along the other corridor, one is offered such masters of art as Michaelagelo and Da Vinci. We popped in to the Raphael gallery, which was

a bunfight; I managed to get a photo of his picture of John the Baptist as a young man.

Then we got to the best bit – the cafeteria. You’ll have twigged by now that all this classical art does nothing for me, so I was glad to be able to sit down for a coffee and a beer. There’s a nice rooftop terrace, with fantastic views over the city which have been carefully obscured by fairly high walls around the terrace. You can get an eyeful of the upper stories of the cathedral campanile and the Palazzo Vecchio

but that is, frankly, about it. Coffee over, it’s simply a matter of

four flights of stairs down and back out into the Piazza della Signoria, by the Palazzo Vecchio, where one can get a nice snap of David and Goliath Hercules doing the “protect the city” bit.

As ever, one has to jockey for position,

but there’s also the opportunity to see Neptune having a slash.

Well, even the gods have to go, and he presumably must normally have a silent pee as in “swimming”.

Our next port of call was something that Bianca, our guide of yesterday, had recommended. From the outside, it’s not particularly prepossessing

but inside the Opificio delle Pietre Dure  is a whole different story, something I found hugely more engaging than all that celebrated classical art in the Uffizi. It is home to the museum of artistic production in semi-precious stones, and the artwork on display is wonderful to behold. There are works of art, all executed in stone, some small

Bible stories

and some larger, like this tabletop, which is a good metre and a half wide.

The inlay stone work is phenomenal – here is one of the birds from that table top.

A common theme is the reconstruction of paintings in decorative stone.

Stone work above, original painting below

and there are many examples on view. They’re all exquisite and some are seriously impressive; shown below are two examples with close ups of details below (I hope; I can’t be held responsible for how your browser decides it’s going to show you this).

Upstairs in this small museum is given over to showcasing the workshop – the workstations that artists will sit at,

the tools they use

and the stones that form the raw materials.

I think we spent longer in this relatively tiny place than we did in the Uffizi. It was a delightful interlude. However, lunch was beckoning and we had to head out into the crowded streets and back down towards the river, past the cathedral, where the street artists were clearly setting themselves up for the expected weekend rush of punters.

(The city was, once again, very crowded – many large tour groups and also groups of schoolkids, largely younger than the ones we’d seen yesterday). We had a little time to spare, and Jane had found a Basilica for us to investigate – the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella. It is at one end of a very pleasant piazza (I don’t, I think, need to tell you its name, which was not imaginatively coined)

and is a striking building.

The distinctive Florentine white-and-green is not in marble but is painted on, Nonetheless, it’s a splendid edifice, and the inside is matchingly splendid.

There is some nice stained glass, both traditional and more modern

and some sumptuously decorated chapels.

Even the gift shop gets the treatment.

The Basilica boasts not one but two cloisters: a small one

which has a remarkable Spanish Chapel off one arm featuring astonishing artwork

with a stunning ceiling;

and a larger one

with artworks in every arch.

Once outside, we saw that the splendid facade was not matched by the view of the back of the Basilica. It’s very handsome, sure, but not as striking as the front.

I had booked us a late lunch (acting on a suggestion from ChatGPT, actually) at somewhere grandly calling itself the Angel Roofbar. After a certain amount of blundering about we found it, five storeys up, and settled down for a Nice Lunch.  I found it a bit of a strange place. I had been expecting a restaurant, but it was more a cocktail bar which did some food. The food was  good and the service very affable, but both food and drink service stopped prompt at 3pm, which was a bit odd since we had a 2,30 table; we had to plead with the waitress to make us a drink to have with our main courses, which was a bit unusual.  The views over the city I had been expecting were decent enough but not remarkable

but anyway we departed refreshed with only a couple of things left on the day’s agenda. One was a matter of practicality: we have to catch a train earlyish tomorrow and we wanted to make sure we knew roughly how the station worked, so we walked over to check out what we’ll have to do tomorrow morning. En route, we passed a very attractive wine bar

with people standing in the sunshone outside with their glasses of wine; and a nice piece of marketing at a bistro

with a replica of the Duomo featuring corks – very cute.

Having checked out the station, we headed back towards our hotel, going via another place that Bianca had recommended – the Annunziata Church itself. We couldn’t get in yesterday because a service was under way (you’ll of course remember the photos of the little cloister outside the doors that I shared yesterday), but it was open now, and so we went in.

Blimey!

It’s quite a place,

with a multitude of highly decorated chapels along each side

and a remarkably-painted cupola.

So we were glad that we’d made the effort to see inside, as it made a fitting end to the day’s perambulations.

Or almost, anyway.

We had one more thing to do, on the recommendation of a friend – to go and see the cathedral lit up in the evening. So we did. It’s very beautiful.

So, th-th-that’s all (for Florence), folks! Tune in again soon to see how our time in Pisa worked out.

Windy Peg

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Sunday 25 September 2022 – We might have done with Montréal, but Montréal (and fate) had not done with us. As I mentioned in my last entry, the itinerary we’re following has evolved over the course of three years and, as a result, has produced some wrinkles. The order of cities was one; the timing of this morning was another. We had grown rather alarmed at the prospect of an 0530 pickup at the hotel – particularly when we saw that the flight that this was to take us to was not at 0800 as originally specified, but 0855. So we had a bit of a back-and-forth with Discover Holidays, who are in charge of local details, and they agreed that an 0630 pickup was OK. 0630 is not good, but it’s a whole lot better than 0530.

0530, however, was, of course, the time we had to set the alarm for. Having done so, and heaved ourselves up to face the rigours of the day, a text arrived at 0553 from those nice people at Air Canada, telling us that our flight was delayed until 1045, “due to a technical problem with the aircraft”, and would be departing from Gate A9.

Hah.

It was too late to change the timing of the pickup, so we got ourselves ready and checked out before 0630. Unsurprisingly, we were alone in the hotel lobby, apart from the receptionist and a chap in a cap. Equally unsurprisingly, it turned out that he was our driver, André (an Italian-Canadian ex-truck driver with a New York accent), and he took us out to the car.

Perhaps a bit OTT for two people and two suitcases to go to the airport, but, hey,

it perks the day up a bit. So did the sunrise.

Our hopes that perhaps fate was making up for the mix-up with the early start were at first slightly lowered when the Air Canada machinery wouldn’t take our checked-in bags and then dashed when we headed for security.

You’ll remember (of course) that we were heading for an A gate, and you can just make an A out in the distance. When we got near it, though,

we saw that there was a huddled mass of humanity between us and it. This was Montréal, we thought, having the last laugh. Actually, it was only about a 35-minute queue and then we were free! Noticeboards were still talking about our flight leaving at 0855 from gate A1, but we smiled, knowing that Air Canada had given us the skinny of the new gate and time. So we sat at Gate A9, not worrying at all about our almost total isolation because We Knew The Score.

At about 40 minutes before the scheduled departure, though, we began to worry that We Didn’t After All Know The Score, so we hurried off to Gate A1, where AC371 (yes, our flight) was still showing as departing. A lady at an adjacent Air Canada desk saw us and the uncertainty we were radiating and shouted out that the flight was no longer going from Gate 1, but was just about to board at Gate 15. So nice of Air Canada to contribute to our exercise regime.

The rest of the journey was fine, involving as it did a decent but not excessive amount of gin and Pringles. It was a little bumpy towards the landing

due to a not insignificant wind. We arrived in Winnipeg (for that was the correct destination) at around midday; by the time we arrived at the carousel our bags had just appeared and we had just a short (but slightly puzzling) walk to our airport hotel, the sumptuously named Lakeview Signature by Wyndham (which is not sumptuous at all, and has a view only of the airfield, but otherwise appears to be perfectly workmanlike). Our room was ready, and the organisers of this next segment of our holiday were obviously on the ball, as there was a board in the hotel lobby telling us where we had to be and when for the introductions and briefing.

So. Why are we in Winnipeg, a westward step in our otherwise eastward progress, significant enough to warrant a change in time zone?? You’ll find out if you keep reading these pages.

In the meantime, we had some hours to kill, and Jane had spotted that Winnipeg airport is home to the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada. This seemed to be only a couple of minutes’ walk away, but the hotel reception virtually insisted that we take the hotel shuttle bus. I think this was to make the driver feel part of the team, because it was a ridiculously short drive. We were greeted by a charming lady called Hedie and welcomed to the museum.

Which was not huge, but really interesting.

Assembled here is a collection of those things that are significant in Canada’s aviation history, particularly in the development of the bush plane. For example, the first purpose-built example, the Fairchild AC71

had great capabilities for all those things that bush planes needed to do (e.g. land on and take off from water). It suffered a little from the fact that the pilot’s ability to see forwards was very limited because the cockpit was set so far back, so it never entered commercial production.

The museum also gave me a chance to show you another one of them Fokkers, in this case a Super Universal.

There are many curiosities on display: an example of a sesquiplane, something I’d never heard of before – a plane with one and a half wings;

a nuclear bomb, which I’m glad the organisers rendered inert before displaying;

a replica of the Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar, a top secret US Air Force funded attempt to create a supersonic fighter capable of vertical take off and landing (it was underpowered, unstable and cancelled, having never got more than a metre into the air);

the Froebe Helicopter, designed in 1937, built from salvaged truck parts and featuring design points that are still in use on today’s helicopters,

but underpowered and hence also not able to rise higher than one metre from the ground; the Vedette, the first attempt at a boat that could fly;

and – my favourite – the Canadair CL-84 Dynavert.

As soon as I saw this beast I thought “Bell Boeing Osprey” (for those of you not familiar with it, here’s a picture of one I took at Farnborough Air Show some years ago)

FIA 2012 - Bell Boeing Osprey

and, indeed, the Dynavert was a predecessor – well ahead of its time, having first flown in 1965, a quarter of a century before the Osprey (though it never found a buyer so was cancelled in 1974).

I particularly like the little helicopter rotors on the tail.

There were many other, more serious, exhibits as well, but I found these the most engaging and we spent a happy hour at the museum in one of those lovely bits of serendipity that contribute so much to life’s pleasure.

Rather than attempt to call up the hotel’s shuttle bus for a return journey, we dared the walk back unaided – the hotel is just under the control tower, so it wasn’t exactly a major expedition. So we stepped out – into an astonishing wind – and fought our way home against it. Apparently it’s been windy here all month.

And this brings you bang up to date. The sunset here is as interesting as the sunrise this morning back in Montreal

and we have about 90 minutes to wait until we get our briefing on the next few days. All we know is that we have to be up, packed, checked out and breakfasted in time to leave the hotel at 0700 tomorrow. So there’s no chance I will report back today about what we learned at the briefing and what we’re up to over the coming days – you’ll have to come back tomorrow to find out more. See you then!