Florence...so much to see and do

We spent four days in Florence and thought it was the nicest city we had visited so far and having a nice place to stay certainly contributed to that feeling.

Our one bedroom apartment was located close to everything in the city and was a great place to go home to after a busy day.

The weather was also great and as a result we walked a lot across the city and enjoyed a lot of its street art...

 

This guy did a different painting every night.

There were many artists doing character sketches...

And I really liked this guy's work...

GIven that Florence is a city of sculpture I was surprised there was not a lot of modern pieces, though I did like this one on one of the bridges...

 

But there are the mimes...

 

 

Every Piazza was different and Republica had a beautiful merry go round that lit up the square...

 

There were not only street markets but many streets of very high end products and so many people were gping with lots of shopping bags. This was one of the window displays of Dolce and Gabanna.

 

Florence is divided by a number of rivers with the Arno being the biggest. I took this picture as the sun was setting one evening.

The most famous bridge is Ponte Vecchio which was the only one of Florence's bridges not destroyed by the Germans in the retreat of World War Two.

Today it is lined with jewellery shops and on top there is a tunnel built by the Medicis to connect their palaces on one side of the bridge to the Uffizi Gallery on the other side of the bridge.

Speaking of the Uffizi I went on a tour there since I hadn't bought a ticket beforehand and without a guided tour would not have gotten one. Don spent the time in the Piazza reading the paper and people watching.

The Uffizi Gallery is probably one of the most important museums in Europe, if not the world. It was started by who else, the Medicis to hold their growing collection of art work and is a huge building right in the center of Florence. It is being renovated to build more space yet even now it is overwhelming. This is a picture of the courtyard over run by people.

The building has a series of corridors of statues... And then over 40 rooms full of art work displayed either by artist or period.

On the tour we spent two hours trying to see the highlights which was difficult but I thought I would share some of it...

This is one of the most famous paintings in the Gallery...The Birth of Venus by Botticelli. It was painted between 1484-86 and was considered a masterpiece even back then.

This painting by Michelangelo was quite beautiful. It was commissioned by a wealthy Florentine to celebrate the birth of his baby. In the beginning Michelangelo did not want to paint as he would rather sculpt but couldn't resist the large amount of money he was paid to do it.

This was one of Leonardo's works, and again I took the images off the Internet as there was no picture taking inside the Rooms.

One of my favourite paintings.

Not being an art historian I was exhausted after two hours even with a good tour guide but again was happy to be able to see such masterpieces up close. Here Sandra, our guide, is explaining the views from the terrace which was a reprieve from the heat and crowds inside.

This view was the Town Hall

 

This the dome of the Duomo

We also took a walk across the river and up to the highest point of land called Piazza Michelangelo for a beautiful view of the outline of Florence.

While there we visited a church run by the Benedictine monks who did mass in the bottom of the church in Latin doing Gregorian chants...too bad the priest was a 100 years old! However with the acoustics the sounds were amazing...

 

Another view from the top...

 

Besides the art, old and new we also saw and ate lots of great food...

 

Panaforte... handmade nougat

Fancy and refreshing ice cream

Huge calazones..

Apertivos...

And last but not least, Florentine steak which is a huge piece of meat, 1.2 kg, shared between two people done 3 minutes on each side so that it is rare but not raw. We had this with fresh mushrooms and white beans, both very traditional side dishes. It is cut from chianina cows,a 2200 year old breed that are only grass fed, apparently this is the reason the meat is so expensive.

So all round Florence was a great visit, a city filled with great art which also has a great vibe. It is small enough to be walkable and we both wished we could have stayed longer but now we are off to the Tuscan countryside.

 

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