Europe Trip - Day 8- Florence, Italy

As usual we began our day with packing our bags, putting them on our backs and walking to the train station. It was day 8 of the same routine. The only place so far were we stayed more than a night was Cinque Terre. Here again we were thankful for packing light. We did not really miss any surplus things that we had skipped. I was totally liking the philosophy of packing light. We walked more than we expected with the bags on our backs. After about 3 hours of train ride we reached Florence - yet another popular city in Italy.

Arrived at florence

First up was the famous Uffizi museum. We are not big fans of artsy museums but thought that we should try visiting at least couple of them to experience it. We walked through the beautiful Renaissance walk that leads up to the museum. We walked through the beautiful cobbled streets, lovely shops and structures along the sides. We passed a huge baptistry which was located in a beautiful huge piazza and had magnificent and intricate architecture.

Magnificent Baptistery

Walking further we reached the museum area. Outside the museum there were beautiful roman sculptures including a copy of the famous Michelangelo’s David whose original sculpture is located in the Academia which is another most visited museum in Florence. Here we felt like time clock has reversed and we were in the ancient Roman times. We were surrounded by beautiful tall Roman sculptures and buildings everywhere.

Outside the museum

Copy of Michelangelo's David outside the Uffizi museum.. the original is at
 Academia museum in Florence

Right outside the museum there were local artists who posed as the sculptures. Their dressing and makeup was so immaculate that you would easily be mistaken to think of a real person as a sculpture. The most funny one was the cupid who was giving some hilarious poses and making weird kissing sounds and winking at the tourists. Everyone seemed to want to click a picture with him. We also did.

funny cupid

would you believe this is a real person?

We had made online reservations for the museum beforehand so we just picked up our tickets and entered the museum. We did not have to stand in the long queue. Thought the ticket online was expensive as they charged a certain transaction fee per ticket when you book online.

Beautiful roman sculptures outside the museum

The museum had lots of paintings that depicted various eras in Roman history. We could not really connect and understand the history and started getting totally bored in the museum. We kept on trying to enjoy it as we paid about 15 Euro per person so that was a total of 60 euros for 4 of us. But we felt like it was a total waste of money for us and headed out to at least save our precious vacation time. I would not really recommend this museum to anyone unless you are really interested in the Roman paintings. Also their entry fee is exorbitantly high.

Inside the Uffizi museum

We headed out and entered into a gelato festival. We bought a gelato card there for 7 euros which let us buy 5 gelatos - an awesome deal. If you are not aware, Gelato originally came from Florence so no wonder we ate so many yummy gelato flavors here.

We took a bus and hopped on and off watching various famous sites in the city. There were just too many historical sites to see. We were mesmerized with all the ancient architecture that we were surrounded with.

view of the streets

The most beautiful site was piazella Michelangelo which we reached by climbing a huge flight of stairs. This view point is dedicated to the great Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo and has replicas of some of his original works like the David.This view point gave us a magnificent aerial view of the Florence city. The city with all its historic buildings looked very beautiful in the evening from the top.

View from the Michealangelo Piazza

We spend some time here and ended our journey in Florence here.  Check out the brief video from this view point overlooking the city.

Overall Florence is a beautiful Italian gem which is a must see.

Check out more pics of the day here.