Sept 24th, Florence Bike and Duomo

9/24     Tuesday

We are very close to a big wide avenue that’s being used for the bike race time trials. We watch for a while, and I get about twelve snapshots of the empty pavement trying to capture a racer with my camera. It’s pretty exciting to see the bikes flying by, followed by the team chase car shouting encouragement with a megaphone.

It’s only a fifteen minute walk by the Arno River to the city center, where the tourist presence increases from scattered sightings to blocks full in all directions. The streets are still so charming, small shops and cafes everywhere, occasional accordion players and street sellers with inane dollar store toys or sheets of printed–out “artwork.”

When we reach the plaza at the Uffizi Museum, the place is swarming with tourists, many of them American. There’s a confusing arrangement of lines for tickets, so we jump into one until we can figure it out, or find someone who can inform us. Turns out we’re in Line 3, for people to turn in their online vouchers for actual tickets to take to the entry at Line 2. If you need to buy tickets, you need to be in Line 1. All these lines are arranged randomly around the loggia of the plaza. In any event, we get out of the lines, so we can buy our vouchers online and come back another day.

Just down the street is the Cathedral, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. The styling of this church, and a few others in the city, is quite striking. The exterior walls are patterned with green and white marble, contrasting with the red bricks of Brunelleschi’s famous dome. The church interior is once again, outstanding and beautiful. You just can’t beat an Italian basilica for Baroque grandeur.

Right outside the church, the spectator barriers are lined up, so we see that the racers will pass through any minute. We hurry over to get a spot on the rail, and Bob steps on one of the crappy posters that are all over the cobblestones of the plaza. The vendor gets very huffy over this, gives us a “Hey, watch what yer doin!” and spends the next ten minutes pointedly wiping the dirt off his masterpiece. He could just spend the dollar to print out another one if it’s so dirty.

We have the Elite Women racers tearing past us. They’re spaced about five minutes apart, causing a rush of cheering, then quiet anticipation, then cheering. Repeat, repeat, repeat!

 1 Video Included

Florence Bike and Duomo