The Day of the Lines

 

Day two in Florence will forever go down in our travel history as the ‘Day of the Lines’. When we arrived at our hotel the previousday, the first thing we tried to do was reserve a ticket to see the statue of David at the Gallerie Academia the following day. The ticket office was closed at the time though, so we couldn’t. So the advice we received was to simply turn up there as close to 9am as possible, and the line wouldn’t be too bad. We still stayed in it for half an hour to an hour, so my recommendation for anyone would be to definitely book in advance.

Once we were in, we made the most of it. I took this photo of the hall that the original David statue stands at the end of, before I realised that we weren’t supposed to take photos inside.

There were a lot of people sketching, so Tom decided that he would give it a go too.  A budding artist (or sculptor) you think?

Afterward, we walked just down the road a bit back to the Duomo, and polished off more of our Tuscan strawberries.

We admired more chalk art in progress, like in Siena…

We found the Wild Boar Market, which was essentially just a market with a statue of a boar at one end. Apparently it’s good luck to rub the boar’s nose. So I did. Of course.

We managed to catch a traditional flag throwing dance outside the Medici Palace…

Admired David once again…

Found yet another bride…

And then went and stood in a line for HOURS to enter the Uffizi Gallery, which contains the second best art collection to the Vatican, apparently. Again, please book ahead. Don’t stand in lines. It ruins holidays, and marriages, at least temporarily.

We weren’t allowed to take photos inside the gallery, so I can’t show you much, but I did take photos of the peeks of the Florence skyline you got from the restaurant balcony.

After recovering from the Uffizi, we returned to our hotel room, and Tom undertook a momentuous task. You may have noticed in the last few posts that he has been attempting to grow some facial hair.

It was time for it to go. Tom had mixed feelings (heaven knows why, since it grows a reddish colour rather than brown like the rest of his hair), but it didn't work during Movember, and it doesn't work now. The face says it all.

 

Once things like beards were out of the way, we were actually able to venture out and enjoy Europe once again.

Even Florence, which is one of the cleanest major cities we've seen so far, has piles of rubbish if you catch it at the right (or wrong) time.

I'm afraid we didn't manage to get photos of our dinners that night. We were both a bit underwhelmed, and that translated into an unwillingness to pick up the camera and shoot. We did get some fabulous scenery on the way home, though.

We even saw a bus so heavily branded by IKEA that you almost expected to be transported into an IKEA store just by stepping inside. Quite an exciting prospect really, an IKEA store on wheels.Why haven't they thought of that yet:?

For some reason (I'm going with stubbornness on Tom's part - which may have been related to the odd smart comment from me), it became my part to be responsible for the map to get us home. I took us on a minor detour at the start, but got us there eventually, I'll have you know.

We did also have to stop at every shop that had an interesting window display, though. Let's just say that my time as official map-reader was short-lived.

So ended our second day in Florence! A couple more to come!