Italy Vacation - Day 11: Florence - 9.19.13 (15)

Italy Vacation – Day 11: Florence – 9.19.13

October 9, 2013 | Travel Photography

Our last full day in Florence was mostly visits to museums and churches. Besides that, we got one last day of great food!

We woke up early, got some breakfast and then went to the Uffizi Gallery for less than 2 hours. It was a good museum/gallery but I’m kind of baffled by the long lines for this place. The MET and MOMA are one of the best in the world and the lines are never as crazy as the Uffizi and Accademia. I’m also annoyed you can’t take pictures in some of museums as well, particularly with the Accademia. With art galleries, I just like to look and keep on moving. If a large group comes into the room, I want to leave immediately. Which kept happening throughout the museum. The biggest crowd was for the Birth of Venus by Botticelli, obviously.

After that, had some time to kill before our next schedule visit to Accademia. Our reservation was for 12:15 but we arrived a little earlier. There’s several lines and I had to ask someone if we were on the right line. Eventually I had to get out of the line to get the voucher across the street. It’s all confusing and probably not necessary. Basically the only thing to see at the Accademia is Michaelango’s David; you barely even need an hour there. You walk by a few other works and then you turn into the long hallway and there is David. This massive sculpture that you just stare at for a long time. I just never knew David was that massive in scale. You aren’t allowed to take pictures at all and if you get caught, you will be yelled at which we saw. That didn’t stop Kristen and I from taking pictures. I was hiding behind a big group and just casually pointed my camera up and hoped for the best. Sometime it was so quiet that I coughed when the shutter went off. Whatever, not like taking a picture is going to ruin the statue. I could see no flash photography being used but no photography at all? That’s just slimy and I’m sure even Michelango would be for people admiring his work by taking a picture of it. They just want you to buy their postcards and merch with David on it.

We headed across the river after the museum visits because we were hungry. We found that area is the best for food. The food was awesome, and it was reasonable priced too. We ended up finding a place we were trying to find on Sunday, Osteria Santo Spirto, that makes excellent gnocchi. We ordered that and split it, and man it was truly the best gnocchi we had in Italy! We sat next to a nice old couple from Southern England who split there time from England and South Africa. We talked politics, holidays, and of course the food. I don’t know what it is with restaurants in Florence, but the majority of the people we met there were so nice. Maybe we just lucked out sitting next to nice people that we could talk to for hours.

After lunch, we walked around a little bit and headed up to Basilica of Santa Maria Novella and enjoyed walking around that for a little bit. We headed back over the river, enjoyed the sunset in Florence one last time and had our final dinner in Florence. It was at the place we ate at on Sunday and had some good food again. The weather could have been a little bit better in Florence but with all the museums and churches, it was still fine. We got nice days and some drizzling days. Florence was a beautiful city with a ton of stuff to do so I definitely recommend visiting it.

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