Florence – then to Venice.

We were up early and, well, kinda slow actually. We enjoyed what was on offer from our kinda fancy Florentine hotel – including breakfast… beats the hell out of remembering to buy some cereal and milk on the way home the night before. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – and the other does tend to try the budget a little.

Finally we were packed up, checked out and free to wander for five hours or so before jumping on the Eurostar to Venice. We made a bee-line for the Archeological Museum – Indi had pegged this one months ago as a must-do. And we didn’t get lost or anything! Dunno what it is about Florence, but there’s one bit that’d a kinda navigational black hole – around Palazzo Strozzi, where the Galileo exhibition was. We ended up there, me scratching my head – map in hand, a few times over the 48 hours we were in town.

The Archeological Museum was kinda under repair – it seems like the whole of Italy is under repair to a certain extent. Earthquakes notwithstanding. None the less, there was some pretty impressive Etruscan and Egyptian gear on show. It’s interesting that, in a country with such a rich history, their treasures are treasured less well than ours. The National Gallery and Museums in Canberra have far higher conservation values (at least to a layman like me) than the institutions over here. It may be the glut of material they have to conserve, every city seems to have about six hundred museums, palaces, etc – or it may be the environment, the air quality and ongoing building works in Florence and Rome are hardly conducive to sterile storage. Then again, a bunch of stuff does rather stand up well. To this day, in the Vatican, thousands upon thousands of feet walk over the mosaic floor that Augustus Cesar had installed in his crib 2000 years ago. I wish we could get wear like that in Downer!

After more staring at old stuff, we exited and wandered in search of some Florentine gelato. Important to try gelato in every city – more than one if possible, just to be sure. Then to the station and onto the train to Venice. Tuscany is beautiful. It’s a bit rude flashing by in a train that will do 300kmh (according to my gps we were only maxing at about 170 – but it was kinda curvy and hilly) – but we get to drive through it in a week or so and that’ll be slower – though I fully expect to be far too stressed to care about how it looks, Italian driving scares me!!