Florence's pin-up boy

Michelangelo’s David. The world’s second most famous David. I’d be a lot more excited about seeing the first one naked, but I’ll leave that for Victoria Beckham. So why all the fuss over this naked statue? I honestly have no idea. I call it the Mona Lisa effect. Art critics hail something as a masterpiece and suddenly everyone has to see it. Sure David might be ripped, but I’d expect a naked man that’s getting that much attention to be a bit more, well, you know…. Michelangelo could have exercised some artistic license in that department.

For these reasons and a lot more, we decided not to visit the “real David”. Instead, I decided to check out one of the fakes planted around town. Mum and Dad had opted to tour the city by bus, but I was on foot. My first stop was Piazza Della Signoria, the location of the most popular Fake David, the Palace Vecchio Museum and a collection of statues that make up a great open-air museum.

The statues seemed to have less religious connotations than a lot of the others I’ve seen in Italy. Most were depicting historical events, some quite graphically. The only information I had to go on was the title, artist and date, but most of the works spoke for themselves.

[caption id="attachment_2258" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Normal size buses just wouldn't fit so these smaller ones run in the city centre."][/caption]

I then tucked my map away and walked. Florence is a funny little city. It's the first time I've seen public toilets signposted, there aren't many fountains (especially compared to Rome) and I loved the smaller buses that run in the centre where big buses just couldn't navigate the narrow streets. Because there are no cars in the centre, the streets were they are allowed are basically parking lots. I saw a few people leave a house and walk for blocks to their scooter or car.

With no destination in mind I found myself at Piazzale Michelangelo, in front of another David and overlooking the city. It was refreshing to view a city not littered with high-rises.





Back down the hill I wandered through the streets. Only a few blocks from the centre and I was quite often the only person on the street. There would be an occasional siren or a motorbike speeding by, but Florence was surprisingly peaceful. By 6pm the heat had started to ease for the first time in days.

After dinner, we walked back to Piazza Della Signoria. The Piazza felt different at night. There was a busker playing classical guitar and only half as many people as were here earlier. We walked into the entrance of the Palace Vecchio Museum. As we admired I guess what would be the lobby of the museum, I overheard some people talk about free tickets. They walked to the ticket box, asked a man standing at its entrance for six tickets and he handed them over. So I tried it! Obviously there was some special event or perhaps it opens for free regularly, however we had our tickets.

Our first stop was the Grand Hall, an incredible room filled with huge paintings. Both Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were asked to complete paintings for it. Michelangelo barely started his before he was summoned to Rome to paint the Sistine Chapel. Da Vinci experimented with new techniques, including the use of wax. When he tried to speed up the drying process by heating it, the wax melted and destroyed most of the painting. But at some point between then (1505) and now, The Battle of Anghiari  was lost thanks to numerous renovations. But this year art experts announced they believe the painting is hidden behind the mural Battle of Marciano in Val di Chiana by Giorgio Vasari. They’ve (controversially) drilled holes into Vasari’s painting to explore what’s behind it and the results point to the painting being preserved there. At the moment Vasari’s painting is covered, I assume while they decide what to do next.

The Palace, Florence’s old town hall, is, like most other such buildings in Italy, completely over the top. The work that goes into these buildings and their design and decoration is incredible.

A pleasant surprise in Florence

I’m a fan of exploring outside the major cities. I find big cities to be more or less the same.  There are exceptions and Italy is one of them. But I always viewed our visit to Florence as eating into the time we could have spent in the smaller, rural areas.

Then we came here.

The first surprise came when we checked into our hotel. Our “triple” room had five beds, three large chairs, two chests of drawers, one wardrobe, and a small round dining table. It also had enough room to fit all of that in again. Our first-floor room at the Hotel Garden was huge. I don’t know what the building was in a past life, but given the size of this room and the enormously high ceilings it must have been something special.

After running laps of our hotel room to work off some gelato (ok we didn’t really, but we could have) we walked into town. We’re on the edge of the city map, but it only took about 10 minutes to reach the centre. Florence is a major city but it’s very relaxed. Even at the major attractions there aren’t mobs of people and most of the centre is pedestrian only so there’s no crazy traffic to battle. No one was rushing. And it was quiet. Not at all what I expected.

While waiting at the train station in the Cinque Terre, we got talking to some ladies who recommended we visit St. Lorenzo market while we were in Florence. With very little shopping under our belt, we figured we may as well.



The market stretches down the streets near St. Lorenzo church. The plethora of stalls can be broken down into four main categories: leather jackets, leather bags, jewellery and souvenirs. We walked away with a couple of bags, but it really would be easy to go overboard. We got the impression most of the stalls are owned by the same people. The sellers would run between them to get stock or a credit card machine. I felt for them today. It was still so hot.



Shopped out and with our clothes clinging to us and sweat pouring off us, we visited the Duomo. The exterior of the church is amazing - so colourful and detailed. Inside was such a contrast - a big open space with no elaborate statures or decorations. Just a couple of stained-glass windows. It was actually nice to see after the elaborate works we saw so much of in Rome. The cupola here was the exception. The artwork on that is more impressive than the Sistine Chapel. We took shelter inside for a while before walking to Piazza della Repubblica.

Following advice from Adventurous Kate, I wanted to find a department store she had mentioned in one of her blogs. Apparently at the top was a café with a great view over the Duomo. After a little walking around the square we found it and went to the top. We had intended to have a drink up here, but we managed to take a few photos and gawk at the drink prices well before a server approached us so we headed back down.



Another tip from Adventurous Kate took us to Il Lantini for dinner – we thought. We arrived at the restaurant about 6.30pm to be told they would open in an hour. We ducked up the street for a drink and came back at 7.30pm to a huge line of people waiting for the restaurant to open. Rather than wait, and with another night left in Florence, we found another restaurant. It turned out to be a great choice – amazing osso buco!