When we awoke we discovered that the brooding skies of the previous day had turned to rain. In fact, it was pouring. This gave Chris a long-sought-after opportunity to gloat about some ludicrously overpriced waterproof jacket that he had purchased in Copenhagen. I just donned a T-shirt and pulled out a cheap umbrella that I’d picked up in London before we left. We still, didn’t have tickets for the buses, but this didn’t really matter anyway because we after the night’s misdirected wanderings we were determined to work out the route on foot. We had to take our backpacks with us too, because I was leaving in the evening to go back to London, and Chris would check into a hotel for his final night in Florence.
I think I actually ended up drier overall, especially since my backpack had a built in waterproof cover. At the end of an hour’s trek into town, we stopped for a much deserved breakfast of fruit-filled croissants.
After finding Chris a hotel and stowing our luggage there, our first stop for the day was the Academia gallery, where Michelangelo’s David is on display. There was a long queue running around several blocks by the time we arrived, and it was still raining, but thanks to the wide eaves of the Florentine buildings, the queue as sheltered from the rain. This didn’t stop the umbrella sellers though. In fact, it seemed that these street sellers try to cash in on any possible opportunity.
Cameras weren’t allowed in the gallery, so I couldn’t take any pictures of the statue, but then you really can’t do it justice anyway. The David is located at the end of a long gallery devoted to its construction – excitement began to grow as I rounded the corner and saw it for the first time. Along with most of the developed world, I’d seen this statue in many pictures and TV programmes, and I can’t imagine anyone failing to be impressed by its elegance.
Michelangelo was actually commissioned by the city authorities to do the sculpture in 1501. David had been adopted by Florence as a sort of mascot. Though a small city, Florence wanted to tell the world that they were fierce as an opponent.
Leaving the Academia, we walked south to the Ponte Vecchio, the famous Florentine bridge with shops lining both sides. From the sides it looks like the whole thing has been put together by a child of eight who has just been given a hammer to play with, but this strange construction has proved remarkably solid. Although it has been completely rebuilt several times, the current structure dates from the fourteenth century, and is the only Florentine bridge to survive the second world war. Originally the shops were blacksmiths and silversmiths, but now expensive silks and jewellery line this famous attraction.
On the south side of the bridge, a thicker-than-average crowd was lining the road, and a few police cars, beeping their horns, came along the road, slowly clearing the pedestrians out of the way. A minute later, dozens of racing bicycles came round the corner. We had obviously happened to come across a cycle race through the city. If it weren’t for the bikes though, you wouldn’t have known – there were no barriers keeping people off the road, and some of the backmarkers had to dodge round impatient pedestrians who thought the show was over.
We ended up in Michelangelo’s Square, where there was another copy of the David, this time in copper, and excellent views across the city.
Before going back to Chris’s hotel to pick up my backpack, we had dinner at a restaurant near the station, which was fantastic. I forget the name of it, but it was white-painted, with a wide wooden door that opened outwards. If you’re at the station you’d walk towards Duamo and it’s on the right.
At ten pm, I checked my tickets again and did a double take. The TGV ticket was for the wrong date. I checked my itinerary card: It did indeed show that I should arrive in Nice on the 23rd, and depart on the 22nd. Furious, I left Chris at the hotel and stormed over to the station, only to find that there was not a single official in sight, and the ticket offices were closed. I walked to the platform, where there was no sign of either my train or any seats to sit on, so I went back to the concourse and slumped down against an advertising hoarding for Honda.
The concourse was badly lit and draughty. Stale cigarette smoke drifted around like low-lying cloud, some distant ventilation ducts roared, and I watched the station clock tick slowly towards half past twelve. The second hand was broken and permanently stuck at 27 seconds. There was no activity on the platforms, about ten of which were lined up along the concourse. The lighting was even worse there, so the trains were practically silhouetted. About half the platforms were occupied.
Several trains came and went, gliding silently in and out, their approach masked by the noise of ventilation ducts. One of the arrivals delivered enough people to take the edge off the general air of gloominess that pervaded the station, but they quickly vanished, leaving only the vagrants. These were extraordinary: at one stage a man walked past me drinking a McDonalds milkshake, from the top down, using the straw to skim the surface. Every so often he would look up and shriek like a parrot.
Another man approached me sometime later, and said ‘Ciao’. I looked up. He was smiling and moving his head in a very odd way, which made it look as though he might be remotely operated, or maybe a kind of pantomime horse with two smaller people inside.
“Hi”
Immediately I mentally kicked myself. “Hi”?? What had I let myself in for? I prayed he didn’t produce a weapon of some kind, or worse, sit down and share his life story with me. I hoped that my expression conveyed the real meaning of my informal greeting, which was ‘go away, I don’t want to talk to you’. I looked down, and he lost interest, wandering off to another part of the station, maybe to find milkshake man.