Friendly Florence but bring your credit card!

There is a lot to do in Florence but you can get a lot done quickly in a couple of days if you come in the off season. I arrived on the train and took my stuff to the hostel before heading into the main section of town. It is only a few blocks from the hostel to there which is convenient. I had forgotten how bad Italian traffic can be though with a couple of days in Venice without cars. They just do random things and crossing the road is a nightmare. I don't know why they bother with zebra crossings as no-one stops at them unless you just step out into the traffic and hope for the best. The scooters are the worst because they don't seem to obey any road rules at all.

I started at the Basilica of San Lorenzo which was the church of the Medici family. I didn't pay to go in though as it was a reasonably nice day, I thought that I would look at the outside of things first. It has a very plain brick facade which I later found out is because the facade had been planned by the designer died before making it reality and no-one else had bothered to do it. I guess now it's just too expensive.

I walked through the souvenir stalls to the Cathedral di Santa Maria, which is easy to find given that you can see it from most of the city and it is enormous. There are three parts to the buildings and one is a very tall tower which is easy to spot from a distance. The square in front of the cathedral was full of tourists (well as full as you get in the off season). The building is impressive but slightly wedding cake. The outside is covered in different coloured marble in a highly detailed pattern and the doors are large and carved. The doors of the baptistery are gold (though I imagine that fake gold that the Italians are so good at ) with scenes from the bible. I didn't go in though.

The cathedral itself is free to enter and is amazing on the inside. It is very plain compared to the outside and is massive. The floor is covered in patterns done in marble and they do have a very fancy holy water font thing at the entrance. Above the door is a mosaic of the Madonna and Child with a clock above it. The tombs on the walls are mostly painted not carved but have been painted to look like they have been carved. It is quite strange. The most ornate section is the dome which is fully painted with scenes from the bible including the apocalypse. It has been done really well with awesome perspective. I've put a photo of it up but it doesn't really do it justice.

You can go into the back section of the cathedral or climb the tower for 6 euros each. Florence is really just as expensive as Venice when it comes to entry fees. It is just accommodation that is cheaper here. On a clear day climbing the tower is meant to be worth it but you can get great views over the city from climbing the stairs up to Michelangelo Square on the other side of the river and it is free.

I headed down towards the Ponte Vecchio and made a detour to the Orsammichele church. This one isn't signposted and is only a small mark on the tourists maps (which are free here by the way) but is definitely worth a visit. The outer walls are covered with niches containing statues of the saints and Virgin. There is a particularly nice Madonna and Child with a happy looking Jesus. He normally looks so somber. Inside there a really impressive altar to the Virgin Mary (I think that officially it is called a tabernacle but I'm not up on my religious items). It's ornately carved and has several icons of the Virgin inside it. The church was originally built for the nearby merchants and part of the building used to be used as a grain store. It's very plain though the ceiling is painted with pictures of saints. Many of the other paints and statues are now in the art galleries around town.

I continued through town and down to the bridge which is really overrated. It is just a normal bridge over the river that has a whole lot of stalls selling tacky jewelry that is probably made in China. It is actually better to cross the river at one of the bridges on either side and look back up at the Ponte Vecchio rather than cross it. I continued up the road to the Pitti Palace which is meant to be very ornate inside but looks like a fortress from the outside. I turned off the main road and made for the Church of the Holy Spirit but couldn't find the entrance. I tried to find somewhere to have something to eat but a lot of places don't open until late or were massively expensive. I did find one place that appeared to be open but the man standing in the doorway having a fag wouldn't get out of my road so I didn't bother.

I crossed back over the river on the Santa Trinita bridge which has some nice statues and good views of the river in both directions. It was starting to get dark, so I called it quits and headed back to the hostel. I was looking for somewhere to eat and not having any luck but it turned out that Clara (the woman who runs the hostel) had just made some lasagne and she gave me some so that I didn't have to go back out. I went to bed ridiculously early as I was really tired after three late nights and three early mornings. I had got to the slightly tired and emotional stage but felt much better after 12 hours sleep.

In the morning, I did some stuff on the internet (free in the hostel which is a major bonus) and then had the free breakfast which is really good here. Lots of places just do toast or cereal but here you get eggs, bacon, toast, cereal, yogurt, juice, milk, spreads, and warm cake. It's pretty good. After a good breakfast, I headed out on the town to try and see as much as possible in the least amount of time. Luckily most things are pretty close together so you don't lose much time getting to things. And at this time of the year, the queues are only thirty to forty minutes long and only in the middle of the day so you don't lose time there either.

I started with the Galleria dell'Accademia which is the home of the Statue of David. It also houses an assortment of other statues and paintings (mostly religious) and at the moment a collection of baroque musical instruments. It is 10 euros to get in which is a little steep but they know that people will pay it to come and see the real David. He used to live in the square outside the Vecchio Palace but there is now a copy standing there. There is also a bronze version in Michelangelo's Square. The real one was moved and the Gallery made especially for it. The baroque instruments were more interesting than they sound as they were weird and wonderful ones that had been made out of strange materials or in strange shapes. There was a harpsichord  made entirely out of marble, some flutes that were shaped like animals and a bejeweled piano thing that had over 1900 precious and semi-precious stones on the outside. There is also an interesting room that is full of plaster models of many statues and busts from around Florence. Many are from the graveyards. The women on them are definitely more curvy than women today (in art anyway). No flat stomachs or thin thighs here. The male statues are also very effeminate looking. There was a couple that I didn't realise were men until  I got to the front.

But of course, everyone comes to the museum to see David and he is impressive. He is at the end of a hall under a large glass dome and there really is no equal in sculpture. He is so realistic. He even has all the veins on his arms and legs carved into the marble. The hands and feet look out of proportion when you look at them individually but overall it works. Strangely since he is meant to have just killed Goliath, the looks kind of scared when you look at him from the right side.

I spent about an hour in the Galleria before heading into town again and going to the San Lorentio Basilica. I had got things wrong and thought that the library (which was decorated by Michelangelo) was open on Saturdays but in fact that is the only day that it isn't open. So I just paid to go into the church which is one of the most depressing places that I have been in ages. It is really gloomy and they play mournful organ music all day. If I worked there, I would be crying before lunchtime. They used grey stone to make the inside and there isn't much light either. It does have one of the ugliest main altars that I have ever seen. It is a true monstrosity made of coloured marble with golden candlesticks. There are some nice paintings in the sacristy including one of the night sky on a particular night over Florence that astronomers have said is very accurate. I didn't hang around long as it was such a miserable place (it's also really cold inside).

I headed down through the town to Palaccio Vecchio which has a large collection of statues outside. There is the replica of David but also many large statues of titans fighting, centaurs wrestling, lions, nymphs, that sort of thing. They are in a large covered area (for the main part) which was packed with people because it had started to rain quite heavily when I left the church and lots of foolish people didn't have coats or umbrellas. It made it quite hard to look at the statues as most people were just standing around getting in the way.

I initially joined the wrong queue and lined up for the palace rather than the gallery. Luckily, I realised my mistake after only 10 minutes and went and joined the right one. There was a queue at the Galleria degli Uffizi but it wasn't that large. It moved incredibly slowly though. You would not move at all for 15 minutes and then move a long distance in a short period and then stand still for another 15 minutes. Once I got to the top, I realised this was because they would let a group in to go through security and once they had then cleared ticketing and the cloak room, another group would be let into the security section. It did make me feel better that the reservation queue wasn't moved much faster than we were.

Security is an absolute joke in these places. They make a big thing of scanning your bags but I had my pocket knife in my bag all day and not a single one picked it up. They also don't want people to bring bottles of any sort into the Uffizi but I had two in my bag that I wasn't giving up unless asked (one has been with me since Romania) and they didn't notice either of them. You have to check in backpacks anyway once you get through ticketing. It's 10 euros here as well but the gallery is much larger. There are two floors with artwork and it took me nearly 3 hours to get through the whole lot (and there are a couple of rooms closed off at the moment).

Stay tuned for more on Florence.