Florence

Finally made it into Firenze at about 7.30pm, just in time to find the one and only camp-site full up. Which, in the circumstances, was just as well co’s we wouldn’t then have experienced the phenomenon of the Piazzale Michelangelo. We were on a road above Firenze, just past the camp-site, when we came across this large car-park with a monument to Michelangelo’s ‘David’ in the centre and a semi-circular balustrade that looked out across the city, across the river Arno and the Ponte Vecchio. A breathtaking view and very moving, 'cos here was the city of Petrarch and Dante - of Giotto, Uccello, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, Vasari, Galileo and Michelangelo, etc., etc., ad gloria.

There were one or two caravans and motorhomes about that looked as though they’d come to rest for the night so we promptly rolled into a space and settled in. It was fairly crowded, lot of people about, but not uncomfortable. However, remember the Spanish habit of going ‘paseo’? Well, here they do it en-mass! By about 9pm the car-park was packed to the seams, the spaces in-between and everywhere else was packed with people; a vast imbroglio of light and shade and noise, a veritable tower of Babel with every language under the sun to be heard. A meeting place for street artists, street musicians, peddlers, teenagers and tourists. Coaches poured in and disgorged docile crocodiles of tourists whilst the local buses emptied noisy crowds in a seemingly unending stream - incredibly this went on until at least four am. When I finally fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

At 6am everyone was woken up by a forceful shower from a sanitation wagon that liberally sprayed the road and anything in the way with a fierce jet of water. Then the sweepers and road polishers moved in and the Piazzale was soon as devoid of dirt and litter as a newly polished floor. The whole place is just astonishing. Called on friends, Peter and Rosemary Diamond, my OU tutor and Chris and Guy’s Eng.Lit. tutor, only to discover they’d left four days ago! Must have heard we were coming - they’ve been here since bloody January.

Absolutely exhausted! Have walked and walked around Firenze. Have drunk in cafes, eaten enormous pizzas whilst walking the streets. Have seen the ‘David’ - I’m not ashamed to say that I stood in front of the David and the tears rolled down my cheeks - it was the highlight of the whole holiday for me. And Botticelli’s ‘Venus’ and bloody near everything else, except that it would take weeks to see everything. One had to be selective, so Maggie chose the galleries and I chose the cafes! Guess who’s pished?

The camp-site, that we finally got on to this morning, is reminiscent of Spanish camp-sites at their worst; I won’t say it’s crowded, but when we leave we’ll take at least three tents with us, two of them have hammered their pegs practically into my tyres! Florence is incredibly beautiful, despite the turistos, and it is still possible to imagine the artistic patronage and political divisions that made the renaissance movement not only possible, but inevitable. There will be a renaissance again soon and, I believe, it will again come from the artists and writers.

God! but this is serious stuff on only two bottles of ‘cheap’ Italian vino, which is a myth 'cos the cheapest I’ve seen so far I’m drinking and that was about 70 pence a litre - 1400 Lira, bloody monopoly money here. Well, I mean, with 100 lira equal to 5 pence and 22,250 lira for 6 gallons of petrol what else is one supposed to think?

Michelangelo's 'Fred'

Florence is a student city, a ‘hippy’ city, outdated as that word might be. It is full of young people, mostly bumming fags, food and money off the turistos. Like Spain, Italy has its quota of beggars and there is nothing more incongruous or pathetic than a beggar outside a Gucci shop; wealth and poverty side by side and each ignoring the other, each so close and yet so far apart as to be in different worlds. I don’t know what’s the matter with me, I keep getting bloody serious and beginning to sound like one of those airy-fairy sociologists; I had a very emotional moment around the ‘David’, I think that must be it. Despite my flippancy the ‘David’ is for me sheer magic, created by a human-being whose power and insight has been unequalled by any, except perhaps his own contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci.