In and Around Florence in One Day

By Tammy H. – Guestblogger from Florence
My two-week intensive Italian course in Florence was over with a final exam on Friday. I got an A and will move on to intermediate level in my Venice school. Saturday 9/13 was my last day in Florence. With a left knee still sore from climbing all the 294 steps up and down the Leaning Tower of Pisa, I decided to take it easy. So I hopped on the Firenze City Sightseeing Bus.
This neat bus company runs double-decker red buses with open tops on two lines: Line A buses make stops in and around Florence while line B buses run another route with some same stops and to nearby Fiesole, a lovely, scenic town on the hill overlooking Florence. Famous people like Alexander Dumas, Anatole France, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, Frank Lloyd Wright, and even Leonardo Da Vinci all spent some productive time there. The city is even older than Florence, dated back to the 5th century and is the favorite summer place for the rich and the famous.
For 20 euro, which you pay when you get on the bus, you get a ticket, a bus route map, and a set of disposable earphones. You can hop on and hop off at various stops within 24 hours as long as you can show your ticket to the next conductor when you get back on. The earphones let you listen to comments and background information in 8 languages: Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese. It's great for a linguist like me. I can sit on the bus all day listening to the comments in different languages.
With the open top deck, you have a great view and can take great pictures. I wish I had known about this city tour bus when I first arrived in Florence. Then I could have visited more interesting places. In my daily walks to school, I passed by a large fenced- in cemetery at Piazza Donatello but didn't know anything about it. From the tour bus commentary, I now know that it's the English Cemetery (and a Swiss property) where my favorite poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning was buried. Some 1409 non-Catholic people from 16 countries were laid to rest in this cemetery including Walter Salvage Landor, the sculptor Hiram Powers and the great scholar G.P. Vieusseux. Arnold Bocklin was inspired by this cemetery and created the famous painting "The Island of the Dead".
Unfortunately for me, the cemetery is closed on weekends…