The Towers of Florence

I must admit that on my many visits I have rarely paid much attention to the medieval towers of Florence, although obviously many other people have. Their history is fascinating. It's obvious that such towers would be built within cities where different families did not always see eye to eye.... On my wander through the city this morning, on the way to get to the tram stop for the journey to the airport, I paid particular attention to the towers, as a friend of mine had told me that a mutual acquaintance has a flat in one of these towers. Very impressive.

I had a bit more time this morning, as my flight to London City had been moved back a couple of hours. So I worked for a couple of hours in the hotel room, and then packed up and went for a wander through the city taking in the Mercato Sant'Ambrogio (lots of delicious looking foods - see second extra) and other districts which I like to see. I had an excellent sandwich at a stand up place in the market, but I felt a bit tense because there were a lot of people begging and coming up to ask for money. I did a bit of street photography to take my mind off feeling that the streets were a little bit challenging (see first extra).

My approach to having a city walk was perhaps in retrospect a little too "relaxed". I knew there was a public transport strike in the city on Friday morning, as part of a general strike, but I'd been assured that there would still be trams, but there just be fewer of them. In fact, it was obvious that the smaller number of trams running were not coping with the pressure on the system. I waited at Unità for about 10-15 minutes to get on a tram, which was reasonably packed. The next few stops saw loads more people getting on the tram, until it was absurdly packed. After that, there were successive delays at various stops, because the fact that all the individual trams were overloaded was placing an excessive strain on the system, with risks that two overloaded trams might pass each other on a bridge which wouldn't be able to take the weight. Eventually we stopped about a kilometre from the airport and it seemed unlikely we would be setting off again for about 20 minutes. I hate sitting around waiting to see what happens, so I set off walking in the direction of the airport. I caught up with another tram that was heading back to the airport a couple of stops later on, and hopped back on. It was almost empty. It too was held at the penultimate stop, and I wondered whether that was it. So I decided to walk again. That was a bad mistake as the tram left the stop almost as soon as I had got out. It was also a bad mistake as the only way to the airport from there was across multiple dual carriageways with no pedestrian lights. I resorted to waving my hands in the airport and walking across whilst stopping the traffic. I am not sure whether there is in fact safe pedestrian access to the airport. There were other people doing the same trick, but pulling trolley cases to make it even worse. At least I just had my medium sized backpack on my back. Anyway, I made it safely in the end, but I would have been better off sitting tight in the second tram.... I'm not sure whether the first one I was on ever got through, although there were certainly plenty of people in the airport, so people were getting there somehow, possibly in taxis.

The journey home was fine. No drunks. A smooth transfer at LCY except that the x-ray machine thought that the Italian salami sausage I had in my bag was "liquid". And then the flight from LCY was 25 minutes early into Edinburgh. Remarkable. I was home before 8pm, and my Fitbit lasted right through, going down to 7% battery. But no uncounted steps!!!!