In Florence we went to museums of art and science, saw the big sites, and walked through the city. As the birthplace of the Renessainse, Florence has a rich and significant past which easily shines through to this day.
We started our first full day in Florence with a short audio walking tour of the main tourist area. We used the Rick Steves Europe app which has audio tours of places and attractions all over Europe. We used the app in Vatican City as well. We saw the colourful Florence Cathedral, the square with the town hall, and Ponte Vecchio. Ponte Vecchio is a bridge with shops on stilts along either side. There have been shops operating there for hundreds of years, although not the gold and silver merchants targeting tourist there today.
In the afternoon we went to Galleria Accademia where the original David is kept. I say the original David because there are at least two other replica Davids in Florence. Although it does have a few other works, including some other Michealangelo sculptures, the Accademia mostly exists to house the David. David is kept at the end of a hall in a large room under a domed roof. Turning the corner and looking down the hall at the 14 foot tall statue, lit by sunlight, was quite something.
Our second day started at the Uffizi Gallery. It is an impressive gallery displaying the full progression of renaissance art. The most famous piece in the gallery is probably the Birth of Venus. There are also some works by Leonardo Davinci, including an unfinished painting where both sketched and painted areas are visible. That afternoon we went to the Galileo Museum which holds a massive collection of scientific equipment from the 16th to 19th centuries. The museum had two of the telescopes Galieo made, along with one of the lenses he used to observe Jupiter’s moons. It also had one of his fingers which was very weird and seemed hero worship-y, like he was some sort of saint. I liked the section full of the devices used to generate and demonstrate electricity when people were first studying electromagnetism, it was a window into the origin of my own education in Electrical Engineering.
On the morning of our last day we went to an excellent little cafe and enjoyed cappuccino, then got paninis at a small shop next to the cathedral. In the panini shop the staff gave us samples of each of the delicious cheeses and meats available then had us choose which ones we liked, a unique system in our experience.
We had a short stay in Florence and this blog post makes it seem even shorter. While we didn’t manage to do many attractions and museums as in some other cities we had a great time walking around the area, eating gelato (supposedly the best in Italy!), and generally enjoying ourselves. We had a proper fancy Italian dinner at a restaurant I found online. During a low key night at a bar we met a group of people from Penticton which was a pleasant surprise. After leaving the bar we walked past the colourful cathedral which looked a little otherworldly lit up at night. Overall we had an easy and enjoyable time in Florence, a good break from our busy and sometimes difficult time in Rome.
Declan Easton 