Florence Open City (for bikes anyway!)

Florence must be the bike capital of the world. They’re everywhere! Now and then you see a banker moving about ten bikes so that he can fit his in. Bikes are lined up everywhere. By the Arno, there seems to be a continuous line of them kilometres long.

Very very tight trousers are de rigeur for ladies in Florence so you can imagine what female leathers look like especially when they are coupled with a designer helmet. (And Florence is the leather capital of the world, remember!) The old James Bond image of a lady wearing bike leathers – taking off her helmet – shaking her hair – … and all that stuff – is an everyday routine here, I’m glad to say. Similarly, men will sport a business suit under their riding attire.

Most bikes are fairly low in power but sometimes high in noise. Others are surprisingly powerful; presumably driven by commuters living well outside the city. Sometimes they even weave their way through walkers in the lanes; eyes fixed to the front with ears only for their audio players.

Then there are the cyclists. These can be confusing as they can approach from behind and from the front at the same time. They decide which side of you they are going to take and you simply feel their wind as they pass in opposite directions on either side. More usual though is a very slow weaving motion as the cyclists wend their way along the lanes politely almost giving way to walkers.

Cars are numerically a minority in Florence. Nice neat smart cars abound but there are a number of tiny cars, I’ve never seen before. Hopefully we’ll see more of them in the future.

There are not as many electric cars around as I had hoped. There are electric points where you can charge them up while you work but I haven’t seem a great many of these. I’ve also seen some electric ‘motorbikes’ (as opposed to bicycles which have auxiliary elecrtric power). They seem lovely; quiet, clean and I should think more reliable.

The town police have electric cars which creep up behind unannounced and can scare you silly. There are also small electric buses which can actually get into some of the lanes. They have only eight seats with room for many more standing but they are also virtually silent.

Have no illusions! More changes are on the way! The first thing you notice when you arrive at Santa Maria

Novella is the work going on around town laying tram tracks. There are trams already running from the station. It’s good to see the craftsmen laying beautiful patterns of cobbles between the rails. (To be honest, I had never realised that, beneath the tram tracks has to be all the trappings of a main railway line) So .. more public transport is on the way.

Will they get round to banning motorbikes from the city centre? They say they are polluting and depositing black stuff on the Duomo.

But things seem fine at the moment. I stop in the middle of the road to take a photograph and hear the loud blast of a horn behind me. I see a taxi driver smiling at me. I thank him with a wave and he wishes me well with a nod of the head. That’s how most people are in the streets here, even motorbike riders sometimes.