Florence: Day 1
Compared to Rome, Florence is asleep. The first thing I noticed when leaving the train and walking to the hotel: bike lanes everywhere. If you tried to ride a bike in Rome, you’d be dead within the hour. There are also “parklets,” parking-space sized parks, for sitting outside of cafes and restaurants. As a proud, longtime supporter of Seattle’s plan for increasing streateries and parklets, I am wondering if we maybe stole the idea from Florence.
We had to hit the ground running in Florence with two museum visits because they would be closed the next day. The first, Gallery di Academia, has Christian art from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Pretty much the only thing everyone cares about is front and center in the museum: Michelangelo’s David.
The lighting changed perfectly as we approached, showing David in all his shining splendor.
I didn’t realize how giant David is, so here’s some tourists for perspective.
The rest of the museum largely consists of white European Jesuses and an interesting collection of art depicting St. Francis of Assisi from all over the world.
Next, we scored some amazing gelato at one of the top gelato places in Florence, and, presumably, the world, and we headed to the next museum, Galleria d’Uffizi or something like that.
This museum was pretty much all white European Jesuses. I’m going to be honest: I don’t really care at all about Christian art and iconography, especially when it’s in a museum and outside of the context of a church. I also don’t believe that anyone else cares about Christian art unless they’re educated on the artists and are able to depict the nuances and changes in symbolism between two nearly identical paintings of “Madonna and Child.” I was not enthused with this museum, except one room full of Botticellis, which was PACKED compared to everywhere else, and a really great Caravaggio of that scene where Abraham is about to kill Isaac. It’s called something specific, but my Christian liberal arts education is obviously failing me.
We also saw this 1st century statue of Channing Tatum’s torso:
After finally escaping this inescapable maze of a museum, it was time for more gelato, this time at the alleged BEST gelato place in Florence. It was definitely my favorite as well and was obviously freshly made with real fruit. Then we strolled around Florence, seeing exciting things like the city’s oldest bridge constructed by the Romans:
This street:
And the view from our hotel terrace:
We ended the night at Piazza di Michelangelo, this mountaintop park with panoramic views of all of Florence. We went up there at night, afraid it would be deserted and that we would summarily be mugged and left for dead. However, it was PACKED with tourists getting drunk on the steps, a live band, and food vendors. And of course, this gorgeous view:
