A Rainy Stopover

Due to a lack of accomodation in Venice, we headed to Florence for two nights. We arrived at the hostel in the rain after a rather wet walk up their very very long drive. After checking in we went back down the long driveway to have a quick look around the area, there being a few hours left of the afternoon. Unfortunately, just as we were heading back it poured down and we got fairly wet and chilled (we had umbrellas but our jeans were still soaked to the knees!). No kitchen again, and no food was found in town, so we resorted to the rather pricey hostel dinner - it left a lot to be desired (breakfast was no better, and I received numerous horrid bites from bed bugs so not the nicest accomodation we've stayed in).

The rain didn't provide the best first impression of Florence for us, but we did our best to reserve judgement till the next day. It was still raining in the morning so our wait to enter the Acadamia Art Gallery was spent sheltering under our umbrellas - only an hour and fifteen minutes to the front of the queue though. Here, we found a delightful exhibition of musical instruments including some violins made by Stradivarius and strange ones such as hurdy-gurdys - very interesting. The statue of David by Michelangelo was the main purpose of our visit and it was quite amazing and cool to be able to see it in person. The rest of the day was spent wandering the streets of Florence, seeing such famous sights as Ponte Vecchio and browsing the leather markets (I found some rather delicious chocolate mousse gelati). Overall, we didn't enjoy Florence as much as other places but this was possibly the fault of the weather!