Florence's Naked Dude!

Today was another relaxing day in Florence! We hit the Renaissance city around 11:30pm and headed to our favourite restaurant starting with M for brunch! Afterwards we headed to Galleria Accademia ie. the home of the most famous naked dude ever carved - Michaelangelo’s David! When we arrived we found a huge queue so but we managed to join the shorter prebooked reservations line. We only waited 10mins or so and we were in! We took our time looking at the other works there, mostly Roman Catholic paintings of the cruxifixion and the virgin Mary. We also saw an exhibition of musical instruments including a Stradivarius violin and viola on display!

The piece de resistance of course was naked dude David, as in ‘David and Goliath’ David from the Old Testament. I must say he really was a masterpiece! He stood about 5 metres tall leaning back on his right foot with a pensive but frowned gaze to his left. What many guides were commenting on (as we eavesdropped!) were David’s big hands! Indeed they seemed out of proportion but they were beautifully sculpted with details such as tendon and veins readily apparent! We spent a good 15-20mins appreciating David before seeing the rest of the small gallery, the remainder of which was mostly a room a sculptures.

We emerged into the Florentine daylight again around 3pm and decided to go for a stroll! We walked through some piazzas and finally found a decent gelato place!!! Got my pistachio and nocciola fix and mmm man it was good! Nearby was a leather goods store and Di had her eyes on 2 handbags there! Decided not to jump into it and to shop around a bit (ie, my delay tactics for buying it for her straight away!)!!!

We walked across the river and up a hill to Piazzale Michaelangelo where we found a bronze replica of David. Here we had a sweeping view of Florence in all its glory! We could see the Duomo, the Palazzo Vechio and the river! There were way too many tourists and dodgy guys hawking their dodgy merchandise though which was kinda irritating and spoiling the atmostphere!

We walked back down and along the river towards the famous bridge the Ponte Vecchio. This bridge has actual shops lining both sides as it crosses the river! They were mostly expensive looking jewellery stores and we wondered who on earth would buy anything from them!

With our stomachs grumbling again, we decided to look for dinner. After walking around for about 30mins, we found a little Trattoria restaurant in a small street that had a fixed price menu of 12 euros for a first course, second course, veges, and wine/water. There were no printed menus once seated and instead the waitress told us the whole menu before taking our orders. This was somewhat off putting as we had to make our choices on the spot without being given the luxury of perousing a proper menu. I ended up choosing spicy macaroni and a fish dish with chips, whilst Di chose pesto pasta and chicken with salad. The house wine was reasonable and so were the entrees, despite Di’s pasta noodles looking and tasting exactly like Chinese Hokkien noodles! The mains were really ordinary! My fish turned out to be squid in a nasty tomato/spinach sauce and Di’s chicken was plain roast chicken. Ah well you win some you lose some!

Returned to our hostel and booked some USA accommodation whilst doing a load of washing/drying. Time to sleep now!