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The Church of Santo Spirito is so lovely because of it’s simplicity. Of course it helps when you photograph it in contrast with a brilliant blue Florentine sky - which I’m led to believe can happen often as the weather was gorgeous while we where there.

Most churches (yes I’m looking at the Duomo [flickr image]) are just so outrageously overdecorated to the point where they make my eyes ache. I admit I have always leaned more to a simple, clean aesthetic (which is probably pretty evident in my own designs) - so I find it hard to appreciate the beauty hidden amongst the gaudy and Baroque. The Boy defaults to the same so it was interesting for us to go through the galleries of Florence.

We visited the Uffizi and the Galleria dell’Accademia. We spent hours at the Uffizi - and to eveyone who told me how dreadful there set up was - you weren’t lying! Reflective protectors cover most of the images, so combined with the lighting you need to stand in odd positions to see the picture properly. I understand this is necessary for protecting the works - but I’m pretty sure it could have been thought out a bit better. The Boy was quite perturbed at the combination of the images and frames. Some of the frames were so elaborate they dwarfed the actual painting. It would be interesting to see which ones still had the original intended frame.

I won’t even mention the way the paintings were hung. If you’ve been there you’ll understand. Some of the walls look like someone has just thrown a stack of paintings at it and they stayed where they stuck.

After wandering around for a few hours and a quick cappucino pick up - and a brief interlude in which the Boy wanted to trail this man who looked like one of the ancient Roman busts that line the halls to show me how similar he looked - we somehow stumbled into another area of the gallery completely. There was hardly anyone in this section because it was just kind of tacked on off the beaten track. We discovered a rather fab exhibition of various artists - and it was set up on darkly painted woodchip board with soft lighting. Such an improvement on the rest of the gallery!

I’m lucky to have seen some of the classic great works of art in my travels, and I’m afraid to say that they rarely live up to ones expectation of them. Of course it’s possibly a result of being over-exposed to them through media and images - and also often as a result of having “gallery fatigue” by the time you see them. The exception to this is Michelangelo’s David in the Galleria dell’Accademia.

The beauty and genius of this work can’t be expressed in photographs. You simply need to see it with your own eyes. The Boy and I managed to slip in between two large tour groups and were able to wander all the way around him almost totally by ourselves for more than 10 minutes, staring with our mouths gaped open in wonder. Turns out that the back of David is in some ways more interesting than the front - which is not often shown in images. I never realized that he was holding a sash across the back of him! Silly me possibly but it explains the odd hand positioning you often see in images of the front.

The Galleria dell’Accademia is small and you can miss some of the higher floors if you aren’t careful as access to them is via a staircase right near the exit. We lucked upon an interesting temporary exhibition of unusual musical instruments - some of which were marble. The patterns on some of the “guitars” were done in intricate inlays rather than painted - although you could only tell by peering closely at the painstaking work.

We enjoyed our trip to the Galleria dell’Accademia more than the Uffizi - but at the Uffizi we both found a painter each which resonated with us. Whose names I have written down somewhere and forgotten. Oops.

Travel tip: It is worth the slightly higher fee to book your tickets to both galleries online before you go. We booked via tickitaly.com and they were easy to deal with and we had to hardly wait in any queues at all. Mind you we also chose the crack of dawn times too. Even in October the queues for tickets were very long.