Leaving Venice was tough. We loved the canal city, but were excited to head off to the capital of the Tuscan region of Italy, Florence.

It’s been written and said that Florence contains richer art than any other city in the world, so we were excited, particularly to see Michelangelo’s David in the Accademia museum. We were also looking forward to enjoying some quality time in Tuscany, enjoying the rolling hills and sunflowers.

NOTE TO TRAVELERS: While Florence is technically in Tuscany, it is not really a great sampling of the region. It is the capital of the region, just not a good representation of the region in the same way that Talahassee is probably not the most telling example of the state of Florida.

First impression of Florence was, MAN, this place is CRAZY. Coming from Venice, it was hard to adjust to the hustle and bustle of a metropolis like Florence. Even Paris managed to avoid feeling like this with its spacious sidewalks – everything in Florence is on top of the confusing, random roads. Those roads make navigating the city quite difficult, although the Florentines make it easier by indicating which side of the Arno River you should stay on (the sides of the river translate to “THIS Side” and “THAT Side”).

The architecture is quite nice, although because the buildings are so close to each other, it’s difficult to get a good feel of what they actually look like. We arrived in the afternoon and checked into another great find of a hotel – the Torre Guelfa, a nicely placed hotel near the center of the city that boasts the “tallest privately-owned tower in Florence”. It’s not the cheapest place you can stay in Florence, but it certainly isn’t the most expensive and it offers access to the tower at all times, which is really pretty cool.

The first night in Florence we were hungry, so we went off to grab some pizza. We had heard rumors that you needed reservations to get into the Uffizi Gallery and the Accademia Museum, but after finding that all the reservations were sold out for the weekend, we decided we should scope the museums out to see what we might be up against.

We found a tolerable line at the Uffizi and decided to go through it. I was glad we did because while in line, we discovered that while the Uffizi was closing about an hour after we entered (6:45 p.m.), the Accademia would be open until 10:00 that evening. I was thoroughly unimpressed with the Uffizi – for €10 each I felt like we didn’t get to see nearly enough. Even the Louvre on FULL PRICE days is only €8.

The crown jewel of the Uffizi, however, is Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Those managing the Uffizi have decided to treat Botticelli’s masterpiece in the same way as da Vinci’s Mona Lisa at the Louvre – it is their brand. To be honest, I was much more drawn to Botticelli’s work than I was da Vinci’s. Not only is it beautiful and meaningful, but it is also massive, measuring over 9 feet wide by almost 6 feet tall.

However, the rest of the museum really left something to be desired for me. It was worth the trip to see Venus, but I just didn’t see it as nearly as important as everyone seemed to make it out to be. Once we exited, I checked the map for the general direction of the Accademia (which was sort of across the city, but not across the river) and I proceeded to get us lost, walking directly past the (very poorly notated) entrance to the museum twice before realizing that it was, in fact, on the side of a non-descript white building on a normal, non-descript street in Florence.

Another €10 in the pocket of another Florence gallery and we walked slowly through the virtually deserted museum, passing I don’t know how many paintings of Mary and the Bambino (one can only take so many of those) before coming to the end of a hallway that led to the rotunda where David stands.

Michelangelo’s David is, without question, the most stunning piece of sculpture I’ve seen in my life. The first thing you notice is its size. Standing 15 feet tall atop an additional 6-foot pedastal, David is an imposing figure. However, the brilliance in the sculpture lies in that, despite the massiveness of the marble statue, I felt such peace. Michelangelo sculpted David not violently standing on the slain Goliath’s head, but in peaceful reflection, a stark contrast to the many other homages to the early King of Israel.

I was so glad that we had found out about the evening hours for the museum because there were only perhaps 30 other people in there with us. Accademia was built solely to display David and it completely does it justice. The way he is displayed only enhances your viewing of this masterpiece. However, there is very little else to see in the gallery, so our time was spent almost entirely in front of Michelangelo’s wonderful work.

After our evening in the two major galleries in Florence, I was ready to move on to the next city. While David was certainly an artistic highlight of the trip, there just wasn’t a lot else I wanted to do in the city. We considered a day trip to Siena, a city in the region that was supposedly much more “Tuscan”, but decided against it, opting instead to stay in the city and see what else it had to offer.

The next morning we awoke and had breakfast at our hotel, enjoying the standard coffee, croissant, orange juice, and a roll. We decided to head across the river to the Palazzo Pitti, the huge Medici palace in Florence, and spend the morning walking around the Boboli Gardens that surround the castle.

This turned out to be a dubious choice. It was the hottest day that we’d experienced yet, and walking around the dusty, hilly “gardens” made us sweat profusely. For the €11 it cost to get into the gardens, I expected a bit more, but really the Boboli Gardens seemed more of a park. There just didn’t seem to be that many flowers. Still, it was large enough that we could walk around for a while. In fact, we had to, because it took a while just to figure out how to get out of the gardens.

After making our way back across to “This Side” of the river, we found our lunch spot, Cantina Verrazano, a charming cafe in downtown Florence across from our intended gelateria for the day, Perche No! (which translates to “Why Not!”). We found the Cantina terrific; our waiter spoke very good English and French (and I’m assuming Italian) and we had some wonderful fresh bruschetta and caprese salad.

After that, we stopped by Il Duomo, the massive cathedral at the center of Florence. Outside the church is a large square and we found some horses taking a break from their busy schedule of pulling tourists around the city in carriages. As we looked at them, we realized that one of the horses had a funny sign on his bridle that said “Don’t Touch! Bite!” (click the picture at left to see it larger). I’m assuming that the translation meant something like “Don’t Touch! He Bites!”, but it was funnier this way.

On our last evening in Florence, we headed back across the river to a pizza place, but Alli started to feel a little ill, so we left as quickly as we could and returned to the room to pack and get ready for Rome.

The next morning we walked around the deserted Sunday streets looking for some fruit and cheese to take on the train with us, but that proved to be extremely difficult both to 1) find a store that was open, and 2) find a store that sold fruit and/or cheese (none did). We took a quick nap and then set off to catch our train to Rome.

UPDATE: Alli’s Florence Post.