Our day of culture darhling!

It was an early early rise today so that we could be up, ready and at the Ufitzi gallery before 8am and beat the crowds. It was painful to be up so early after such a long night, but it was worth it let me tell you, just to beat the crowd. We were lucky really, we were about 20th in the line up, but as time ticked on the quoe grew and grew… it was huge! Just as we were thinking of how smart we’d been in getting there so early a tour group of 30 or so people trooped over and began to push in in front of us. No one near us was impressed by this, it was very rude. Chris and I have by now, had enough of being pushed about and having others quoe jump, so we put our hands on our hips to create less room for them and began to push in front of them… It was only fair, do unto others and all that… the line began to move and we kept moving, pushing in front of the tour group who were trying there darndest to get in front of us… I’m happy to say that we made it in just, and in front of the pushy group! As soon as Chris and I had walked through the door the security guard pulled the rope barrier up, which made us giggle to ourselves really… that’s what you get for trying to push/sneak in!

Once inside we took a good look around all the pieces of art and and sculptures that made up the gallery. There were many famous artists’ shown here, Michalangelo, Da Vinci for example, and these works were impressive to look at yes, but it was the smaller ‘unknown’ names and pieces of work that impressed me the most. For example there was one pencil sketch of Jesus with a group of people, it was innocent and to me, just beautiful, it really was, however critics had popped their opinion under the work saying that this picture was not necessarily considered a work of art as it was in pencil and then trying to second guess who all these people with Jesus were. This really upset me for a moment or two, to me the picture was just depicting Jesus with every day man, the underdogs etc, but these critics had gone into much detail stating that person 1 must be Peter, person 2 must be John etc etc, they even had the gall to say that person 3 was Mary Magdaline dressed up as a man so that she could ‘hang out’ with Jesus… really? I think art critics over analize things personally. As I said, this was my favourite piece as it just seemed so innocent and natural and as if the artist had just picked up a pencil one day and begun to just doodle away… he (or she) was probably at some very boring meeting from back in the day (the importance of barting for sheep or something you know? Or how many goats can you get for one camel, that sort of crap) and was bored of it all…

Chris’ favourite piece was the painting of “Venus” This was an impressive piece I must admit. A lot of detail had gone into it and it was very beautiful with its gold edging etc. We spent a lot of time at this, staring at it and appreciating it… we even got a sneaky photo or two (we were later caught when snapping another piece of work)

We spent hours in here, just strolling around, taking things in, relaxing and being impressed, but by 11am our feet were sore, and, as we’d missed breakfast were just a little hungry by now, so we abandoned the gallery and head to our favourite Florence café, the same one we’d visited last night. The food and drink was as good as we’d remembered and the staff just as friendly, we had a quick bite to eat before heading off in the direction of ‘the statue of David’

Lines here in Florence are very long, they snake out doors, around buildings and down streets… we were shocked at the size of this quoue, but couldn’t help ut feel just a little smug… we walked up to the security man and showed him our time reservation ticket and… he opened the gate for us and in we went. Yes, we had been bright and decided to get our hostel to ring ahead and book us a reservation for this gallery, you then get told a time to arrive and a code to give, then, you just walk in. It was fantastic, no waiting in the hot sun, sweating, dehydrating, getting sunburnt… nope, just a code and time and in we go… felt a bit like “Bond”

I have to say, we were both surprised by the size of this gallery, it was tiny really! There are a coupe of rooms with various statues, another room where a very good and impressive photography exhibition was taking place and then you walk into the main hall where you are greeted by a gianormous naked David with a sling shot slung over his back. The work that went into this statue is mind blowing, the detail, the perfection of it all… it’s amazing! Michelangelo really out did him self with this one!! Well… apart for the sisten chapel that is… We sat and looked at this work for a long time for two reasons really, A) it was bloody impressive and B) our feet were bloody sore and we were tired. All around us were other tourists equally as impressed and in awe, just taking in this mammoth statue, one girl near us was busy sketching away, her work was very good too.

It was now getting much later in the afternoon and we were once more thirsty and a bit puckish, so we made our way out and sat in a little park where, after consuming our rolls, fed crumbs to the birds. They’re game little birds here, hopping right up to you and taking crumbs from your palm. Chris was able to feed one and we had to laugh as the bit of bread it was trying to take was almost as large as itself,but it wasn’t going to give up and as Chris held out this crumb the little birds wings were going crazy trying to take off, it was rather cute really!

We wandered about for a time, taking in last minute things, looking at little stalls and markets before making our way back to the hotel and picking up our packs to head to the train for our over night to Paris.

written by

Chris and Emily on July 28, 2009 from Florence, Italy

from the travel blog: Europe 2009

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