Italy - Rome, Florence, Bologna, San Marino and Venice

[hangchoi]

Gelato time. We visited 2 gelato shops in Florence. The first one offered me the best Pineapple gelato I have ever had. The second shop is very famous, Vivoli. It has close to 100 years old and they have gelato of rice flavour.

[hangchoi]

We went to Piazzale Michelangelo to see the sunset in the evening. You may go there by bus or on foot. Last time we went to there in the afternoon (11 years ago). The entrance has another replica of David in bronze.

You can oversee the old city of Florence. Nice view and hence a lot of people fighting and squeezing to get a good angle to shoot.

[hangchoi]

We had dinner at Trattoria Za Za. Quite famous here and we had to wait for half hour to get a seat. Nice environemnt and yummy food.

[hangchoi]

Next day, we woke up early to go to Galleria dell' Accademia. The original David is here. Make sure you reserved the tickets for this place. When we arrived at 9:00am the opening time of the gallery. A long line of people were already there. This may be the longest line I have ever seen. The line almost surrounded the whole block of building.

[hangchoi]

The gallery is not big actually, most people came for the original David. However, the hall in front of the David is worth to have a closer look. There are 5 sculptures which are also the work of Michelangelo in his early stage. Some of them were partly finished. You can see another version of Pieta.

[hangchoi]

David. The original one once was installed at the entrance of city hall (Piazza della Signoria). To celebrate the opening of this gallery, the government moved the original here and made a replica at the city hall. If you take a closer look at the sculpture, you will find that the head of the David is larger on scale. Michelangelo deliberately made it to cater for the viewing angle as most people will look up the statue.

I took some pictures from a different angle too.

[hangchoi]

Before we went to museum in the afternoon, we went to Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze. This church houses a lot of Firenze's heroes and was a scene for the movie Inferno. At the entrance, there is a statue of Dante, the one who described the hell in details and his description was generally used by the religious people.

[hangchoi]

The church was constructed by Franciscan pligrim. It has a lot of tiny chapels. Quite and solemn. On the two side of the main church, different Firenze celebrities were buried there. Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo, etc. There was a tomb for Dante but as far as I know Dante was not buried here...

[hangchoi]

We spent most of our afternoon visiting Galleria degli Uffizi. Before that we took a picture of Ponte Vecchio, the old bridge.

Galleria degli Uffizi, due to its famous name, attracts a lot of visitors. Most of them know they have to book a ticket before visit and hence, not many people line up, just about 100 meter long queue. Yes, 100m long is considered as short queue here........

[hangchoi]

The gallery is huge with lots of collections. They arranged the exhibits in chronological order. The most famous one is "The birth of Venus" by Botticelli. (the second picture)

The last one shows some sculptures, seeing them as a whole gave me an impression of a set of martial art.....