Accademia - August 12, 2010

 Thursday August 12, 2010

Senne's Summary: The highlight of today was seeing the statue of David in the Accademia.

Today we slept in a bit (nice comfy bed and pillows) and awake to a pretty disgusting smell. Upon investigation it appears to be the neighbourhood garbage and apartment building pipes. I guess this is what happens when they leave the garbage bins out in the hot sun, and the building is from the 14th century. I suspect they are trying to fix the pipe problem because the entire street in front of the apartment is dug up. (Nobody has been by to work on it though…)

The smell eventually goes away (and returns a couple times throughout the day) and we head out to do a couple of errands. 1. Bus ticket for Sunday to Siena 2. Get some groceries. Today we found the biggest grocery store we’ve seen in Europe so far! Venice had a lot of stores selling sparkly stuff, but Florence has a lot of stores selling food. We managed to get some healthy food… fruit, yogurt, cereal, juice (and of course some treats… my favourite were the Paprika Pringles…try them!!!!) and headed back home for breakfast.

This of course was so tiring that I needed a nap 😀 Steve watched music videos with Polish subtitles while I napped.

Next we decide to head out to the Accademia to see David. When we arrive the line is definitely longer than yesterday, so we decide to go buy the tickets at the other place where you can get the reservations.

At first, we had a bit of trouble locating it, but then Steve found it! We went in, bought the tickets and got a reservation for 2:15 (just the amount of time it would take to walk back).

Travel Tip: Do not stand in line at the Accademia. Walk down the street to the Museo Archaelogico (where there is no line), pay 4 extra Euros for your ticket (14 total), and then walk back down the street to the Accademia (5 minutes away) and walk straight in skipping the approximately 3 hour wait in the hot sun. I’m pretty sure your time is worth the 4 extra Euros!

The first exhibit we saw in the museum was the musical instruments. That was pretty interesting actually, and we spent a bit of time in there checking them all out. Then we came out into a gallery of paintings. If I were going to generalize (and I do like to generalize), I would say a lot of the paintings in Florence are about Jesus. Some of them dated back to the 1300’s, so that was interesting just to see something that old.

We went through another exhibit in a dark curtained room, which seemed to be about relationships and families (mostly told in paintings about Bible Stories), and then we walked out a door and saw David.

Wow! I didn’t realize it was going to be that impressive. Of course, I’ve seen pictures, but pictures don’t even come close to doing him justice. He is quite tall (5 metres) and is up on a pedestal under a big dome. There are "No photos, NO PHOTOS!" but someone (I won’t mention any names) may have snuck one.

The One and Only David!

It’s quite amazing to imagine someone 500 years ago taking a giant slab of marble (that was abandoned by the city) and chipping out such a perfect statue of a human being. We did sit and stare at it for quite some time. (Interesting fact: Steve and David both have the same veins showing in their arms!)

I wasn’t sure if the Accademia was going to be worth it, because it seems like a lot of people just want to see David because it’s on the list of things to see. We certainly don’t know anything about Art, but we both think it was definitely worth the admission even if David had been the only thing in there!

We also looked at a few more unfinished statues by Michelangelo. This was really interesting because they looked like they were trying to get out of the marble slabs and you could see the chip marks made when he was creating the statues. It was interesting to see what the statues looked like during the creative process… you could imagine what it was like to actually see someone making one. I can’t really even fathom how much talent a person must have to turn an enormous slab of marble into a magnificent life-like statue!

After the statues we were ready to go get some lunch, but then realized there was another floor. Since we were there we figured we better check it out. It was full of paintings dating again from the 1300’s (almost all with Mary and Jesus) so we zipped through there moderately quickly. (You can only look at so many paintings of Mary and Jesus... and we were both hungry!) One interesting thing on that floor was that there was a lady doing a demonstration of how they put all the gold leaf on the paintings and talking about the creation process back in the 1300’s… hunger won over curiosity though. (If we weren’t hungry I probably would have stayed and watched… enquiring minds you know!)

Next, we head down past the Duomo to what appears to be the main shopping street and find a place that sells salads with chicken. Seems regular to you, but this is the first time we’ve seen something like this in 42 days (pasta and bread…are easy to find in Europe. Vegetables…not so much). We thoroughly enjoy our lunch with lots of vegetables! Yes!

Next we decide to go sit back in the piazza with all the big statues. As we get there I see the Uffizi gallery and decide to go check on how we get reservations for there. Again, a giant line up (hours long for sure) was waiting to get in, and the reservation line was empty. Steve went in and bought two tickets for 10:30 tomorrow morning. Again it was 4 extra Euros for the reservation, but so worth it!

Then we went back and sat in the piazza and looked at the statues and watched the people… I could just watch people all day.

Side note: I didn’t count (but if I come to Florence again I will) how many “fake David” statues there are. They seem to be everywhere!

There are lots of statues, most are copies of famous originals that sit in museums and galleries throughout Florence. One of these copies is a statue of David (he stands in front of Palazzo del Vecchio).

One of the "fake" Davids!

We learned from today’s visit to the Accademia that this was the original location of “David”.  They moved the original to the Accademia in the mid 1800’s to preserve and protect it.  Once when the servants were ordered to do a reno/clean out of the Palazzo del Vechhio, one of the servants threw a wooden bench out the third story window…this bench hit the statue of David (the original) and knocked his right arm completely off, which then broke in three pieces (sure glad I was not that servant).

We decide to head home because we have some ice cream snacks in the freezer. (Do they have Magnum bars back home???? If they do, you HAVE to buy some. They are delicious!) On the way home Steve shows me a bakery with the BIGGEST Meringues (meringa in Italian) that I’ve seen. They were seriously the size of my face!!!

At home, we decide to have a quiet night and just watch a video and some TV. All this vacationing is tiring you know 😉