Today was our last whole day in Italy, and we spent it in Florence. This is a much bigger city than all the other places we have visited, with lots of things to see. I’m sure you could spend several days there checking out the various churches, palaces and museums but we only had one afternoon, so we focused in on the main goals, the cathedral and the Uffizi art gallery. Because this is such a popular tourist destination, there was of course a lot of people, with massive queues for the biggest attractions; to skip the queue we decided to only see the cathedral from the outside. I’m sure the inside is worth seeing too, but the outside is really impressive.
The front of the cathedral The Baptistery Cathedral door Cathedral tower The family outside the cathedral
For the Uffizi we bypassed the lines by prebooking our tickets online which let us get in with less hassle. What we hadn’t planned on however was the metal detectors. I have a habit of always bringing a pocket knife, a flashlight and a few other survival tools when I’m out and about – lets just say I like being prepared. Before they let me in I had to check these things in at the guard booth. They generally don’t like that you carry bags inside – I guess they are afraid you might bump into some artwork – but they didn’t let us check them in since we had laptops inside; the end result was that I had to lug around a bag with our laptops on my chest which was rather uncomfortable. So here’s a quick tip for anyone wanting to visit the Uffizi: don’t bring pocket knives and leave all electronics at home, preferably just stick your phone in your pocket and go in totally without any bags.
Anyway, I’m not a big patron of the arts or anything but even I recognize some of the great renaissance masters like Michelangelo or Botticelli.
Beautifully decorated room inside the Uffizi Botticelli’s Primavera The main attraction: Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus
Except for those vary famous paintings I was not all that interested – that’s more for Renegade Wife who has a masters degree in fine arts. I did however amuse myself with finding the somewhat odd artworks:
I like the contrast between this very colorful guy and the guy that looks like death. I don’t know the name of this painting but I suspect it’s Venus Surfing on the Worlds Ugliest Fish. I like this collection of statues that all have their hands in the air, it’s like a party or something.
When we left the Uffizi, Yini and I only had an hour to go before we needed to catch our train back north to Milano. We had our last gelato for the trip then headed to the train station. We needn’t have hurried however, as it turned out that there was a strike on the train and we had to wait for almost two hours. That’s it for this trip, both Yini and I have had great time. I think Yini was the happiest since she got to see Pompeii, with the renaissance masters as a bonus.
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