Rejoice Florence and Take Some Stupid Pictures!

Now you may have been bitterly disappointed with my last post about my visit to Florence. Where was the banter? Where was the back-story? Well readers, I love Florence for its architecture and I wanted to devote an entire post to its beauty before I launch into how I abused it by taking a plethora of ridiculous pictures along the way.

If you remember me saying that I couldn't tell you any of the little pearls of wisdom we were told on our tour, then you're about to find out why...

So the day started by the Uffizi - the most famous art gallery in Florence (the one where David isn't). I found a statue of Neptune and with a bit of clever positioning, managed to ruin the iconography of Renaissance art in about thirty seconds. Job done.

At this point in the language course, inter-group relations couldn't have been any better. To be honest it was the peak - we'd spent all that time climbing up to this point and in the final week with the test and goodbyes pending, things started to wane a little. Oh well, that's to look forward to in a future post...

The 'Desperate' gang - me, Bree, Lynette, Susan (and some tag-alongs) decided to take on the city together (initially at least) and soaked in all the sights together. For those of you who are interested, Gaby didn't join us because she was meeting up with a friend in Florence and, understandably, she wanted to see her and not us.

So we hopped aboard the banter train and went to another part of the city - another sight to see, another old thing to take a picture of - there really isn't any rest for the wicked...

At this magnificent sight, the amusing picture of the hour was using the Obelix thing to make us into majestic unicorns. Score.

Our tour guide was sensing the lack of focus and thought he'd give us a break before he lost us completely to deface other important sights in Florence. This break gave us another photo opportunity...

I've always wondered what I'd look like with dark straight hair.

Now I know.

What was more entertaining was how the rest of the gang looked with blonde curls. Now that was entertaining - especially when we tried it on our tour guide (a sweaty, slightly pervy Italian bloke called Carlo).

After that excitement we calmed down a little and ventured over the the Boboli Gardens via the Ponte Vecchio: name-dropping a-go-go.

In front of the Boboli Gardens is a building that is important though I forget what it is - the only reason I remembered about the gardens was because of their funny name.

Anyway, in front of that is a large expanse of, well, nothing. It's just a large patch of gravel with a funny sculpture on it, but we'll get to that later. First, Susan and I decided to declare our love for each other.

Once that was done, we turned to the sculpture that I think was supposed to be a cat: if you're blind and don't know what a cat looks like. Or feels like. Or really if you don't know what a cat is.

Because of this comtempt towards the stupid piece of modern art spoiling my favourite Italian city, I decided to mock it in an amusing picture. Check.

The last picture is my favourite. It intends not to mock, but to admire, to appreciate and open a discourse on contrasting cultures and how they impact on society. That and it's just darn funny...

After that the Fantastic Four split up and Bree and I went off in search of scarves and 'Ciao Bella' t-shirts and Susan and Lynette went off in search of coffee. That job completed, we met back up at Neptune's bottom and left the city.

In my previous post you may recall we stopped off for one last sight to see on our way back and the photo-fun didn't end there, but you can read all about that here...