Useful: Florence, Volume 1

It occurs to me that as much as this space is mostly used as a forum for me to sketch out my thoughts and experiences from day to day/week to week (a "live journal," if you will), it might be helpful to actually log the occasional post of information that would be of general use to a person planning their own trips? So with that in mind, I'm inaugurating a feature I like to call "what if this blog was of any any use whatsoever to other people once in a while?" Starting here, starting now: Florence! In this fist post, I'll cover some general lifestyle thoughts as well as sightseeing tips. A future installment will tackle specific recommendations for food and shops... and I guess anything else that comes to mind? Now: to the knowledge!

Come, sit by me on this bench, and allow me to share my wisdom and A B S O R B  Y O U  I N T O  T H E  T R E E S

A quick caveat: everyone's got their own style of travel. Mine tends toward cultural immersion; I've got an interest in history, some interest in art (though my tastes run more modern), but I usually think my trips are most successful when I've gotten a sense of how life might be lived in another context, exploring the day-to-day of different cultures. That colors a lot of my advice: I'd rather build a couple of deliberate, non-rushed stops into my day than whirlwind-blitz a city to say that I have "done" Rome, for instance. Other people are different! Know your flavor! Listen to Rick Steves's interview with Arthur Frommer about the guy who wrote Frommer's first guide to Mexico! Which I'll write about some other time! That said... here's some brain-piles.

Day After Day: Building Your Time

Navigatin' the city with locals, or with hordes of tourists: the choice is yours!

Routines: It's always ideal to spend a week in any city of substance (Paris, Florence, Rome, Vienna, Copenhagen, Berlin, etc etc), to beat jetlag and not feel rushed, but also to give you time to find routines. This is key in Italy. In Florence, you'll follow a pretty typical Italian schedule: start your day at the nearest caffe or pasticceria for a cappuchino and a cornetto (a croissant-adjacent pastry), sfoglio (turnover, basically) or bomboloni (donuts). In, out, and on with your day. At lunch, take it at the relaxed pace the Italians do - most shops and some sites will be closed between 12 and 3 anyhow, so take your time, and if you finish early, find a caffe with some atmosphere to enjoy a coffee while you read, plan, or just unwind before the afternoon. Dinner is late, around 8 at the earliest if you want to be in the local swing of things. Take a long passeggiata (stroll) through the town. These are the hours that Florence really feels magical, especially if you tuck into the outer neighborhoods.

Calendarage: Sundays and Mondays are big days for closures - museums and shops alike. On Sundays, though, you can almost always find multiple festivals or markets in the major square (Santo Spirito and Santa Croce usually have great artisanal markets of some stripe). Monday is a good day, if you're here for a spell, to get out into the countryside for a relaxed taste of Tuscany.

Crowd Control: The same as most places; hit the big sites early or late in the day. The next section has more specific advice, but if you can line up any major sights before 10 AM or after 4 PM, you'll miss a lot of the massive group tours or day trippers. Instead, spend those midday hours exploring the city's workshops (more on that in the next post), looking for street art, or settling into a table at a caffe... the city is like most places here (Venice included!) in that you can almost always find quiet or at least non-touristy corners if you poke just a few blocks out from the crowds. It's small. You won't get lost forever. Explore.

Find your way: Florence has two numbering systems, one for residences and one for businesses. That's why you'll see a number sequence of 56 - 54 - 12 - 50. This may also be why Google sometimes has no clue where something's meant to be. Again: explore, wander. If you know you want to visit a place, jot down the street name and number, and then stroll.

Museum Workarounds

Planning in advance can get you some moments in relative seclusion with this fella. That's some real magic, I think...

The Rundown: Florence's Big Three are the Duomo, the Accademia, and the Uffizi. The Duomo is iconic, stunning from the outside and swell views from up top. It's free, but crowded at midday. The Accademia is the home of Michaelangelo's David, with replicas near the Uffizi and up at Piazzale Michaelangelo to the south of the city. The original does have an aura that elevates it above its copies; I was skeptical, but am glad I went (see below). The Uffizi is a Renaissance treasure trove, and your feelings about that period's art will dictate how the museum works for you. Specific tips below...

Uffizi evening hours: I'm not a museum-hound; it takes a special space (usually modern, given my tastes) like the Louisiana in Copenhagen or the Pompidou in Paris to absorb and delight me. But this is the treasure trove of Florence, and outside of the Vatican museum it's probably Italy's greatest collection. (I prefer the Vatican.) But it's also crowded and has the over-stuffed-with-masterpieces problem of the Musee d'Orsay. My take: book in advance for an entry late in the day. If you're there between June and October, go on Tuesday around 6 PM; the museum is open til 10, which wasn't listed in guidebooks as of last year, and it'll have normal-museum crowds. N.B.: Book early for this; as high season rolls in, entire days become unavailable to reserve in advance. This is one of the few things that's worth planning out in advance, I think.

First Sunday of the Month: All state museums are free this day, and some which usually close on Sundays open for it. The flipside: it's insanely crowded, with locals and tourists alike, looking to save a buck. My recommendation: If you're here, especially if you arrived on a Saturday and are up early Sunday after resetting your jetlag clock, get to the Accademia (home of Michaelangelo's David) by around 7. You'll stand in line, but likely at the front, for about an hour. Bring coffee and a book, or chat with your neighbors if they're friendly and pleasant. When the doors open, if you're in that first wave, you can sweep to the left as you enter the museum, and to your right will be David, ideally situated and pretty much just yours and a dozen or so others' until the rest of the line make their way in and find their way to the statue. I like this approach because the Accademia doesn't have a lot of note beyond the David; it's not my top pick of how to spend your money (even your museum money) in Florence, but it's kind of perfect for this day. Get in early, take a moment to be genuinely awed by the David, and then head to the Bargello (excellent sculpture-centric museum), which will be pretty sleepy despite the free entry. After that, maybe head to the Boboli Gardens outside the Pitti Palace. You'll avoid the mayhem of the Uffizi and later-day Accademia, and get a nice blend of museum time and gorgeous nature.

To be continued...
Honestly, while Florence has massive holdings for its period (and huge historic significance as the birthplace of the Renaissance), to me its charm - the reason I wanted to come back this summer and the reason I've been happy here - is its outside-the-tourist-zone artisanal workshops, the relaxed pace of life and the deliberate cultivation of good things. While it's probably nonsense to come here and skip the museums, the next installment here (coming sometime next week) will tackle food, shopping, and day-filling meanderings that make the city special - and to some extent I really do feel that you could do a week here without setting foot in a museum and have a pretty glorious time of it. Stay tuned I guess if this is even remotely interesting to you??