Florence: In Love With David

The David-a damn fine specimen, Michaelangelos' masterpiece (at Academia Museum)
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Florence/Firenze was our next stop via Eurail or Trenitalia to be exact. Before I tell you about our crazy day, we have noted a few differences between Italy and Greece:

1. Greek boys are more chauchy and have more Euromullets and faux-hawks

He is buff and gorgeous, we got pictures and the Museum Nazi lady got mad at us!

2. Italian boys wear suits during the day while Greek boys are Euro-trendy and wear such things like silver shoes, flashy jeans and tight, tight, tight shirts.

David's bum
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3. Italy cares a bit more for their pedestrians (In crosswalks, you only have to wait about 10 seconds for someone to stop. At actual road crossings, with lights, Italy has a little yellow man that flashes as a warning, but Greece just goes from green to red...scary! Sometimes the cars, bikes and even people just go for it and if you are not paying attention you will die or get severly injured, and most definately get sworn at). We still tried to hide behind a local human "shield" when we crossed any road.

The Duomo (the cathedral)
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4. Greece (at least Athens) stays up later and we felt safer at night wandering around downtown at 4 or 5 in the morning.

5. Italy is more conservative in dress (what? fashion country of the world???)

Anyway enough of that. We used our rail pass for the 1^st time and we had some issues trying to get on the train. We were not supposed to fill in the start and end dates apparently so we were delayed forever and went through so many people and asked many many times why we couldn’t just change the date on the pass. The manager showed up and what did he do? Just changed the date like we were saying! We were not impressed and missed the fast train and took a longer train and stopped in every town possible and it actually had a broken car so we had to stop and switch trains halfway though too! Boo to Trenitalia!

Palazzo Vecchio (old palace)
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Eventually we got to Florence. We didn’t have much time since museums closed early so we decided to walk around and window shop. We checked out some squares and churches from the outside. The churches are really nice here and not as damaged by car exhaust (or are cleaned more regularly) but you can see that they are white and you can see the colors (green, red, gold, pink etc). Very cool. The Duomo was the biggest church here and the most beautiful. From the outside you could see all the bright colors (red, green, pink) and we were the most impressed by this church (at least from the outside). There was a stop at the Piazza Santa Croce and the Chiesa (church) di Santa Croce and we amused ourselves by calling it Santa “Crotch”. We saw a fight between a boyfriend & girlfriend and could have sworn this girl was on drugs-she looked all cracked out and acted like it but we watched nonetheless. Gelato recommended by Rick was also a site worth mentioning (I like rice flavored gelato now too). We took it easy because the next day we had to get up early and go to the famous museums. Some close at 1 pm! And as many of you know, Steph and I are not morning people. That night we had some beers at our hostel and tried to go to bed early but for some reason we always seemed to be the last people to get back to our rooms!

Paid to climb the campanile's 400 steps
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Our hostel in Florence was totally cool cuz it had a good hot breakfast! We were used to the nasty old bun, stale cereal & McDick’s-tasting "orange" juice from our Rome hostel but the one in Florence had a choice of 8 things you could order. We could get eggs, toast, ham, pastries, pasta, etc! Our choice was the grilled ham and cheese sandwich with a side of pasta. We never though you could eat pasta that early but it was good and hot and came with spinach so how could you not? We stayed in a room with 4 bunks and 1 single bed and Steph was all about top bunks which is awesome cuz I like the bottom ones. The shower was a huge room with a toilet and sink inside which was weird for me but Steph said it reminded her of China.

Climbing up...
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NEED TIM HORTONS…Early the next morning (well, 8am), we headed off to the Uffizi Museum, which holds works from the famous painters like Botticelli (Birth of Venus), da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, etc. It was cool except there were way too many religious pictures that I didn’t get or care for and we had to wait in line for 2 hours. At least we got to line up with some Ottawa-nians(?) and the guy had a cool watch with a dancing robot that we were greatly amused by.

How do you break up a day at the museums? By climbing 400+ steps to see the city of Florence, of course! We thought we were climbing the Duomo stairs but apparently we are on crack and we climbed those of 82m high campanile next door (I think it had more stairs too! Brutal!). We could see the top of the Duomo steps with the gold Michelangelo’s lantern and the rest of the city and main sites. And yes, we paid 6 Euros for this pleasant and sweaty experience. I thought about climbing the Duomo steps too but Steph would have killed me. We also wandered around inside the Duomo but the outside is cooler than inside.

Old bell in the tower
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The next museum was the famed Accademia and that was where we fell in love with David. You stop in your tracks. He was bigger than we thought and housed in a rounded high ceiling-ed area. The hallway leading up to David has Michelangelo’s 4 Slaves and a Pleta which were unfinished to show them emerging from the marble. Anyway back to hot David. He is buff and gorgeous, we got pictures and the Museum Nazi lady got mad at us (and everyone else)! We got one from the front and got yelled at. Then snuck one of David's bum without getting busted!

Sweet view of Florence
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We had another amazing dinner with fellow Rick Steves travelers and made fun of some of them. There was also an accordion player who played in the restaurant. I saw a middle-aged man peeing because he went into the ladies bathroom and didn’t lock the door. GROSS! LOCK THE DOOR. I was severely traumatized (Steph thought this was funny) and found out that right after another guy walked in on him too. HAHA. We went for gelato again and hung out at the hostel since Florence isn’t much of a party town.