Florence, Italy

The continuation of cultural overload happened again today. The day started off with breakfast in Piazza della Signoria. This plaza has many statues and fountains including the one of Neptune.

Neptune, Piazza della Signoria, Florence, Italy

Also here is Loggia della Signoria – another area of the plaza which is full of significant statues.

We walked over to the Uffizi, handed over our prepaid ticket (laughed at everyone queueing for the next hour or so), and walked straight in. The Uffizi is said to hold the most important art in Italy, with its collection dating between the 13th – 18th centuries. Inside we saw two famous Botticelli’s – The Birth of Venus and Allegory of Spring – as well as countless works by da Vinci, Raphael, Fra Angelico and (of course) Michelangelo. The gallery’s hallways are lined with portraits of famous rulers and statues of Roman leaders and mythological characters.

When we had finished here it was already time for lunch, so off we went until we found a quiet restaurant for our daily Italian fix (today it was pizza).

After lunch we headed towards the station to organize transport back to Nice. We ended up booking a bus for Friday at 11.30 am which cost around 40,000 lire.

From here we went in search of a supermarket only to find an outdoor market (which of course didn’t sell any food like we needed).

We wandered around the numerous t-shirt, leather, handbag and scarf stalls for a while without making any purchases before heading over to Palazzo Vecchio. This palace was home to the Medici family – rulers of Florentine government of a time (and I believe illegitimate members of Popes’ families at the time). It is now a museum containing artworks collected over a period of time and frescos painted in various rooms. All in all, I didn’t really go much for anything here. Maybe because I was tired, or maybe because I’m all museumed out. However, the second last room I liked. It was full of maps painted well before the discovery of Australia, and its centerpiece was a huge, old globe (on which you could only just distinguish some countries and regions.

Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy

This was our last visit for the day. We headed back to the bus-stop and caught the 13 back to the campsite. We moved the tent to a new spot as the last two nights we had been sleeping/sliding on a hill.