Italy (cont'd) - Florence

After spending 2 nights in Venice, we took a Eurostar to Florence. The journey was only about 3 hours and it wasn't hard to find our way to/from the train stations. The bustle of Florence hit us the moment we stepped out of the central train station - unlike the laidback and touristy feel of Venice, Florence was just abuzz with activity. Of course this activity included that of pickpockets and other dodgy people, so it didn't feel all that safe walking about the streets of Florence.

Florence is probably the home of art and culture in Italy. It has a long tradition of being a focal point of sculptors, painters, and other struggling artistes. I imagine that Florence was like the Hollywood of the 12th - 16th Century, where all these struggling artistes do oddjobs and other rubbish work until they can find a patron or a paying customer....

Anyway, lots of sculptures and other artsy things to see in Florence. The only problem is - you have to queue. And queue. And queue.

This was the queue to get into the Duomo (estimated 3 hours waiting time):


And this was the queue to get into the Galleria Academia (where the main attraction is Michelangelo's David):


Seeing all these queues, I decided to do what I had been doing since recess time in Primary 1 - go for the shortest queue. This meant queueing for about an hour to see David. Seeing David in the flesh (stone?) was pretty cool - it's massive and is an amazing piece of work. David is also a very pretty boy. Some parts are however disturbingly disproportionate....(i'll tell u about it if you ask me but i'm not going to blog about it here).

For those who would rather not queue, there's also an exact replica of David in the main square (Piazza della Signoria) -

(birdwatching)



The next morning, we got up super early and made our way to the Uffizi by about 7.30am, thinking that being so ultra kiasu we would be the first ones in the queue. We were wrong. There were many other more kiasu people than us. So anyway, when the place opened at 8.30am we were one of the first ones in. Yeah!

The other attraction in Florence is the Ponte Vecchio, which literally means 'old bridge'. As with many other things in Italy, this bridge dates from medieval times and is a feat in architecture/stonework/design and all that blah.





Oh and for people who are interested, there is a huge leather market in Florence called the San Lorenzo Market. It's massive and smells like dead cow. Lots of nice leather goods but be prepared to bargain and be ripped off unless you are an expert in dead cow skin.

After spending 1.5 days in Florence, we picked up our rental car (a Fiat Punto Grande) which we had pre-booked for 1 week. To be honest, i was quite glad to leave Florence. It was just too jam packed with tourists and touristy activity. I was looking forward to heading out to the country to see the real Italy...(to be continued)