Florence the fourth

To tell the truth, I spent most of the day on the couch, relaxing the last vestiges of my cold into extinction. In my defence, today was 1 May, the equivalent of our Labour Day, and I decided to import a little of my own holiday tradition of doing nothing laborious at all. I did get out eventually though, to tour the bridges of Madison County of Florence. So now I have a billion pictures of bridges and on bridges and off bridges and I can't remember which is what.

My cunning plan of up and across and down and across.

Since this is the first picture I'm guessing this is Ponte Amerigo Vespucci. He may not have discovered America, but I'm pretty sure he discovered this bridge.

This is what passes for a beach in Florence - it's a huge cement break that, uh... (little help, river nerds?), but I guess when the water's low enough Florentines use it as the seaside.

This is the other end of it. It's on an angle across the river, so maybe it's there to direct water away from the areas most prone to flooding.

View back along. All the street lights along the riverside are covered with coloured plastic, I guess with the artistic intention of making people's eyes go woogy.

Shriveledy old balloons.

I finally saw some interesting wildlife! I'm not at all sure what it is though. Beaver? Otter? Large rat?

Woo! Adventure tourism!

This one has statues at either end, so it must be Ponte Santa Trinita.

The insanely cantilevered jewellery shops on Ponte Vecchio.

The Uffizi from over the river. There's a long lovely courtyard between the two wings of the gallery, but alas, as has been my lot in life on this trip, it's filled with scaffolding and a crane.

But all of that was just taking the long way around to get to Santa Croce, inside which are buried Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli. Total makings of a zombie supergroup.

And on my way back I came across a flag-tossing competition in Piazza della Signoria. At least, I assume that's what it was - I got there too late to see any actual tossing, but just in time for the prize giving. Never mind, at least I saw some men in tights.