We left La Spezia fairly early today (by early I mean before 10) and headed towards Pisa. The weather was looking a bit crappy, and I glad we did the Cinque Terre yesterday, may have been a bit wet today. The drive to Pisa was fairly short and we were there in just over an hour.
Getting to the Leaning Tower is pretty easy. It's in an amazing little Piazza with the tower, a baptistery, a cathedral and an enclosed cemetery. We asked about climbing the tower, and the first available time was at 2.40 pm, more than 3 hours away. We decided against it. Walking around the piazza was good, and I bought a ticket and went into the baptistery (very echoey) and the cathedral. Both allowed photography which was good and we fairly interesting. I didn't go to the cemetery 'cos I didn't actually work out which building it was til later, otherwise I would have. We had read before that there isn't much in Pisa other than the tower, and it's fairly accurate. We were in and out of Pisa within 2 hours and on our way to Florence.
We didn't take the motorway to Florence, as the other roads were about as quick according to the GPS. We took about 1.5 hours to get there, then had fun getting into town, as a lot of roads were closed for construction or travelled in the opposite direction to what the GPS said. The first hotel we tried was closed, so we went to the other side of the city and tried another. Hotel Althea is a nice hotel, and was relatively cheap. It also has free internet which is what I'm using to upload this.
We only have the one night in Florence, so we raced out to see the sights. I made straight for the Galleria dell' Accademia, which houses Michelangelo's David. We also saw the Porte Vecchio, Duomo and the Piazza della Signoria with a bunch of statues on the way which were nice, but I had my sights set. I almost walked past the gallery it was so unassuming. It's a grey door along an off-white wall up a side street. The only thing that set it apart was the 30 metre queue of people out the front. We only took about 15 mins to get in. The gallery houses a lot of other things other than David (including a Stratovaria Violin, Viola ad Cello) but the highlight is easily David. It is huge in person, and absolutely breathtaking. There's no words to describe it.
Inside the gallery there was a plaster cast of the Rape of the Sabine statue that I had wanted to see, and according to the inscription, the original was in the Piazza della Signoria. I had walked past there earlier, seen the statue and assumed it was a copy. It, and a bunch of others including a cool one with a decapitated head, are out in the open, with pigeons and people milling about. A bit of a shock, so we had to head past it again on the way back. We also stopped at the markets (famous for their leather, but only bought some sunglasses) and waited in line at the Uffizi Gallery (which houses the Medici collection of pre-Renaissance, Renaissance and Baroque art). The line didn't move an inch in the 30 mins we were there, so unfortunately was gave up. We headed back to the hotel, having dinner on the way.
I'm glad we got into see David today. My rush to get there out of fear of there being a line was unnecessary, and also meant we missed out on going into the Duomo, and perhaps getting into the Uffizi, but it was still a great day. I saw two statues I like, and a poorly built tower.
Signing off...
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