Florence day 1

Well, now I'm in the famous Florence. Is it more beautiful than Venice? Probably not, but I would say it's more grand. The streets are wide and straight, and the churches and imposing and impressive. And as far as art goes it's probably only second to the Louvre.

You're not allowed to take photos in the museums,
but luckily there's a handful of replicas of David's
willy around the city.

If you haven't guessed, I spent today visiting galleries. The first one was the Galleria del Accademia which houses the celebrated Statue of David by Michaelangelo. For those of you who have been living under a rock their whole lives, the David is a sculpture of a big todger with a guy attached to it. Renaissance Italy clearly had a different sense of modesty to these days, but being brought up in a period and place that frowns upon grown men flouncing around naked in public, waving their willies at all, I can't help but trying to avert my eyes from the most famous sculpture in the world. Other men like me, avoiding their gaze falling below waist-height, might be prone to feeling a little inadequate compared to his unnaturally handsome features and (literally) chiselled abs, but if they threw their embarassment out the window for one moment they would notice Michaelangelo wasn't completely unaware of realism. These hypothetical men might then salvage a scrap of their self esteem when they realise poor David isn't quite so well endowed, and his two veg are even a little lop-sided. The other thing I couldn't help but notice is the irony of how huge the statue of little David the Giant killer is.
Now enough of describing a naked man. I didn't just visit the gallery for the statue. Well, okay I kinda did, but I also went in the hope of finding some other gem as interesting or even moreso, and as such I wasn't disappointed. There was also a series of unfinished statues attributed to the same Michaelangelo. These were the most interesting part by far, as you could still see the chisel-marks imparted by the artist before he got a chance to smoothe them all out. They felt more real in that way, and made me feel closer to him. This is possibly not such a great thing - Michaelangelo was an arrogant, grumpy, spiteful man, but I daresay I'll say more about that when I get to Rome.

This is what Florence looks like

Apart from the Galleria del Accademia I also visited the Uffizi gallery. All in all it was much better - one of the best in the world, containing such masterpieces as the Birth of Venus. The only problem is the whole thing seemed a little self-absorbed. Usually around two thirds of the descriptions of the paintings tended to focus on how and when the gallery acquired them, and there was even a big exhibition of nothing but models of the gallery building. However, as I keep mentioning galleries and museums aren't that exciting to write about, so now I'm going to visit some pubs which this city, in comparison to Venice, has in abundance.