Catchup #2: Florence

Eugh... I knew I should have written this much much earlier... Now I can hardly remember what we did in Florence. Let me get out my itinerary...

My one abiding memory of Florence is that it is a really gorgeous place. I can see why people in the Renaissance would have wanted to go there to be inspired and make beautiful art, music and literature.

On our first day there we went to the Musei Accademia, which is famous for holding Michelangelo's statue of David. And I have to say, the statue is truly amazing. Photos don't do it justice really - the way Michelangelo sculpted it - it looks like David's about to step down off that pedestal and whoop more Goliath ass, should he feel like it. And it's huge - about 20m tall, so's you can see it for some distance away and get nervous with anticipation as you get closer. Definitely a Florence highlight.

Now I can't remember exactly where it was, it might have been part of that museum or another, but there was this ehibit we saw at around that time that showed the evolution of muscial instruments. The exhibition itself was really cool, but the best thing about it was that we were all about 5cm away from a Stradivarius violin (jealous Paul and Chong?). Granted, it was through a plane of plexi-glass, but still...

Other things we did were to visit the famous Ponte Vecchio, the bridge of lovers. This bridge is often depicted in Shakespeare, and has heaps of padlocks attached to it, presumably from lovers who want to 'lock' away their love and throw the key off the bridge into the river below. How romantic! ;) [I couldn't find any spare padlocks Sa!]

Anyway, we also visited the Uffizi gallery, which holds so many famous works of art it's unbelievable. If you look into any encyclopedia and look up the term 'painting', it's likely you'll see several works that are from the Uffizi gallery. The most famous work here is Boticelli's 'Birth of Venus'.



After that we went to the Garden of Michelangelo, which overlooks the city and even more beautiful pictures of the landscape as the sun set.