So yet again this morning, Helen woke with a humongous headache, aka migraine. Absolutely no chance of exercise today, she looked terrible when I peeled my eyelids open to see her fumbling around in an old make up bag desperately trying to find a migraine tablet. Fortunately she found one, dusted it off, and an hour later was just starting to look human again.
I managed to finish preparations for our trip into Florence to meet up with Nigel and Emma French - old friends of mine from my conference days - who were there for the day having taken the train up from Rome where they are staying on holiday.
By the time we needed to leave the house to catch the 10:50 train from Pescia, Helen was just about feeling up to the journey - although it was touch and go, and I think she could have easily let me go alone and climbed back into bed.
We arrived at a nice empty station, parked the car for free (it seemed like there had been a pay system in place at some point, but there were now no barriers or machines) and bought our tickets without queueing (and on the advice of our guests in July bought the return tickets at the same time in order to avoid the queues in Florence - we were very glad we had done when we saw the huge lines of people at the other end).
So, after parting with a grand total of €23 for two adult day return tickets (a bargain when you compare it with the cost of a return fare from Abingdon/Radley to London, which is pretty much the same distance as we were doing), we hopped onto the train (which arrived bang on time), and an hour later we were pulling into Florence. It really couldn't have been any easier. It was good to actually test this trip out - it was our first time using the trains in Italy (on all of our holiday visits we've always had a rental car so have never needed to use public transport) and can say that they were as good as the guide books would have you believe.
We had an hour to kill before Nigel and Emma finished their tour of the Galleria Accademia (home to Michaelangelo's statue of David), so we walked around a little, marvelled at the spectacular Duomo - the scale of which (thinking both in terms of size and man hours it must have taken to build) is immense - then circled the Galleria Accademia before heading down the street towards the old central market piazza, where we had arranged to meet Nigel and Emma.
Part way down the road we had a call from Emma saying that they had just left the gallery - despite the (typically Italian) late start to their tour, they had finished on time, so we soon found each other and headed straight to find a place to collapse for liquid refreshment in the market square. What was intended to be a quick drink before lunch turned into two or three drinks and lunch - all bought very generously by the French's (something we will reciprocate when they come and stay with us). We had a great couple of hours caching up with them before deciding to get off our back sides and have a wander around.
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| Cheers! Great to see old friends. |
The market square is home not only to a huge outdoor market but also an enormous indoor one. Unfortunately, the indoor market had already shut its doors by the time we finished lunch, but we had fun browsing the stalls of the outdoor section, where Emma bought a new ostrich leather handbag after a bit of bartering with the stall owner. The amount of leather goods for sale here is dizzying - mainly bags and purses, and a few jackets. There is a bit of repetition from stall to stall, but it all looks of excellent quality and certainly smells of the genuine thing. We assume that these bags come from the nearby area known as 'the leather route' - an area between Florence and Pisa centred around Santa Croce sull'Arno, where a lot of the top designer names have their leather goods made. I'd have happily bought some of the luggage bags and even a new man bag if I wasn't a poor farmer these days, Nigel was less keen on the idea of a man bag and despite all of us insisting he try some, he left without a single one hanging around him.
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| Emma does some bartering. |
After the market, we walked back past the Duomo, through the old piazza and then towards the river to see the famous Ponte Vecchio.
We crossed the Ponte Vecchio before finding a very nice wine bar where we sat for another hour with Nigel, Emma and I sipping some lovely chianti and verdicchio while Helen sipped on water, as she was starting to feel a little frazzled again. Before we knew it, it was approaching six o'clock! Chris had arranged to come to our house with his chainsaw for a couple of hours this evening to give me a guided tour of the woods, show me some fire-ready trees, and to cut a few more down so that when we get back from Seattle all I need to do is make them wood-burner-sized, rather than having to do any felling. I had to call him to let him know we were still in Florence, apologise, and rearrange for Friday. That done, we finished our drinks and walked back in the direction of the station. After saying farewell to the French's all too soon, leaving them to soak up Florence's early evening atmosphere on their own, we made a mad dash for the 19:11 train home - which we just made in time.
The train was chock-a-block! It felt like rush hour in London, and was very warm. By this time Helen's headache had returned with full force and standing in a packed train didn't do much to help matters. Fortunately, a fair number of passengers cleared out after the first two/three stops, and by the time we reached Pistoia, we were able to find seats.
We spent the rest of the journey chatting to an older couple from England who had been into to Florence for the day from their holiday rental near Lucca. Clearly Italophiles, they seemed to have travelled Italy much more extensively than we have (we've never managed to drag ourselves outside of Tuscany and Umbria) so we had plenty to talk about - so much so that if Helen hadn't been paying attention, I think we'd have missed our stop!
By the time we got back to the car (in the dark), Helen's head was feeling even worse than it had been first thing this morning. Fortunately, while we were killing time waiting for Nigel and Emma's tour to finish, we had popped into a pharmacy and managed to acquire the very same tablets her UK doctor prescribed for migraines. So as soon as we got back to the car (and more importantly, the bottle of water that we'd left there), she took one and we headed for home.
As we approached the house in the dark we saw three pairs of eyes reflecting back at us - two sets belonging to our cats, and the other belonging to a baby deer which soon pranced up the bank, ran around Goose Island, then off into the woods. We're not sure what had been going on prior to our arrival - whether the cats had just curiously been watching this deer feed, feet away, on our driveway or whether they were pretending to stalk it. Either way we abruptly ended their fun and took them inside for their dinner before they themselves ended up dinner for a fox!
Helen went straight upstairs to bed, only stopping to collect a glass of water to take with her. She was in bed by 9pm, but I suspected she would sleep right through.
This left me a rare couple of hours on my own, so I settled down to a cheese and onion sandwich, a glass of red wine, and an hour and a half of highlights of the first two weeks of the American football season before retiring myself.
An excellent day that could have only improved by the absence of a migraine.
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