{"id":2384,"date":"2018-06-07T10:52:07","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T15:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/?p=2384"},"modified":"2024-06-17T18:51:52","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T22:51:52","slug":"180607-infested","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/180607-infested\/","title":{"rendered":"180607-Infested"},"content":{"rendered":"

I learned last night that 500 years ago the hostel served as a women’s prison. A 7:45 am departure put me second in line for the Uffizi Museum opening at 8:15 am (with a fair amount of crowd speculation as to whether we were all in the right place!). I wandered there almost three hours. Quite approachable, with most displays in English as well as Italian. <\/p>\n

I next learned the city has closed the main fortress for a concert, and later learned the other fortress serves as an art museum. Poor thing.<\/p>\n

A day of back-and-forth across the city. Despite what I had heard, Florence is not that beautiful a city overall.
\n\"image\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Many museums and churches, and frescoes galore, but the city itself is drab. And lines. Of tourists. For everything. Florence serves as a core tourist destination. Given the numbers, every attraction costs twice what it’s worth (except Uffizi, priced about right). And still a wait of thirty minutes to an hour for attractions, with tourist season barely started. Touristy enough that mimes infest the city. I also watched a scary clown wander back and forth tormenting tourists for the amusement of onlookers.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Never made it to the train station; that will either work out in the morning, or I’ll just cycle back across the mountains. I’d rather not though; I took what I think was the best route here, and I’m good with that.<\/p>\n

While peering at my map, another guest mentioned he’s thinking about trying cycling – around Italy. We had a good talk, and along the way I learned he’s from Ferrara, my planned destination tomorrow, so I have a list of suggestions from him.<\/p>\n

Tonight I made reservations for the last two days.<\/p>\n

I still notice green doors everywhere. Thanks Bev.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I learned last night that 500 years ago the hostel served as a women’s prison. A 7:45 am departure put me second in line for the Uffizi Museum opening at 8:15 am (with a fair amount of crowd speculation as to whether we were all in the right place!). I wandered there almost three hours. … Continue reading “180607-Infested”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-touring"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2384"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2521,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384\/revisions\/2521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}