Vivian Goes to Florence

I spent a day in Florence, which I was surprised to learn is quite small. I explored the entire city in just a few hours but I didn’t have enough time to visit some of the surrounding cities in Tuscany. I visited the Duomo (Cathedral), which is really spectacular and huge. I visited some other churches as well. Since I had time to kill, I went to the Uffizi. Honestly, I was disappointed. After spending hours in line and 11 Euros, I expected so much more. The Uffizi has artwork from centuries ago, which is really cool, but it was boring and all of the paintings are dark and depressing. I don’t know why the artists used such dark colors when they made all of those paintings but it just brought my mood down. All of the paintings depicted something serious or tragic. They all just made me frown. I would say at least 90% of the paintings were of Madonna and Child and I got so sick of it. Where is the originality? I expected so much more from these so-called world-class artists. The Uffizi is fairly large. It took me over two hours to go through the entire museum and that’s with me rushing through the last half. I did liked SOME of the paintings though. I probably would’ve had a better time visiting the Galileo Museum and some other science museums but it’s too late now.  

I had no luck with food in Florence. The food I ate was subpar. I am extremely disappointed with Italy. I had expected to be crawling out of every restaurant because I ate too much because it was so good and I couldn’t stop but this is definitely not the case. I might just have really bad luck when it comes to choosing places to eat.

Overall, I think Florence is a lovely city but I don’t know what all the hype is about. Maybe the other cities in Tuscany are different but Florence is just like the rest of Italy. All it has to offer are museums and churches, which aren’t really my thing. I’ve been to way too many churches in the last week. Italy is just too religious for me. I definitely expected more than this. I’ve always wanted to go to Italy so I had really high expectations that were definitely not met. Maybe one day I’ll go back and see another side of Italy.

Piazza Santa Maria Novella

 Piazza Santa Croce

 Piazza Duomo

 Piazza della Signoria

 Uffizi

 

Ponte Vecchio