Europe . Italy . Florence: Museums galore... although we didn´t go in most of them

Sunday, October, 8th, 2006

Our first full day in Florence and we decided to explore the city. We walked by the Piazza Michaelangelo (which had an enormous statue of David in the centre of it and also had an amazing view of the city) and then we headed into the city centre. All the streets were nice and the traffic was much less crazy than in Rome. I took the role as navigator and managed not to get us TOO lost, only a little disoriented. WE went to visit the Museo Borghello which was basically a museum full of sculptures. Tyler was in heaven! The only bad part was that you weren´t allowed to take photos in most of the rooms. We don´t know why but Tyler managed to sneak in some. My favourite area was the courtyard, it was full of statues and included a bunch that were originally part of a giant fountain that was disassembled for some reason. We were actually permitted to take photos in the courtyard area so that may be part of the reason why it was my favourite.

We also went to visit the Duomo which we only saw from the outside but that was good enough for us. It had a neat green and white checkered appearance and was in the middle of being restored. Unlike a lot of the artworks in Italy, this one looked like the restoration would help it. All of the shops in the Duomo area were nice to look at and browse. It´s a great way to spend the day, just wandering around the city.

We tried to go to the Museo Uffizi, the most popular art gallery in Florence and also supposed to be one of the best. However, there was a huge line-up and the museum was only open for 2 or more hours and the price was around 12.50euros each so we decided to skip t that day. We though that we´d end our day by going to visit the Jardins de Boboli but our guide book mislead us because we thought that we could go visit JUST the gardens but that wasn´t the case. We had to buy a ticket for the gardens and the some museums which cost 8euros so we decided it wasn´t worth it wince we only had an hour and a half left until it was closed. The lesson we learned on this day was that you should always have the newest, updated version of your travel guide. Ours was from 2003 and has caused quite a few problems for us. :P

Our disappointment was washed away when we saw the piazza near the Uffizi museum. It had some of the most impressive statues of our entire trip,¨"The Rape of the Sabine" and "Perseus with the Gorgon´s Head" were among the coolest and most awesome statues that we have seen. We also added to our enjoyment by getting some delicious hot chocolate on our way to Ponte Vecchio (the bridge of silver and goldsmiths), it was like someone had steamed some milk and then added chunks of hot chocolate and stirred it all together. Liquid hot chocolate, tim hortons just can´t compare.

All in all it was a pretty tiring day just walking around the city. I can see how everyone falls in love with Florence. Tyler and I bought some groceries and ate dinner at a picnic table at our campsite. We had bought playing cards at a dollar store earlier that day so we invented some new rules to accommodate for these "different" cards (only had numbers 1-7, and the queens may have been men, we couldn´t tell).

-Jenny and Tyler, crazy card game masters

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