Frolicking around Florence

Florence, or Firenze to the locals, is just over two hours from Venice by train on Trenitalia, which is a train service in Italy and not traumatised genitalia. The Tuscan capital and birthplace of the Renaissance attracts millions of tourist for a reason: its beauty. The charm of the city emanates through every monumental building, piece of art and its people. It's hard not to get caught up in the atmosphere in a place where significant historical figures walked the street, people such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and we don't mean those from the Ninja Turtles, and of course the infamous Medici family. Oh, and how could you forget that it's the birthplace of Pinocchio.

It's also not hard to see why Florence is one of the fashion capitals of the world. The women ooze style from every pore. Some haven't eaten since the nineties but still have enough strength to swipe their credit card to purchase those $2000 Italian leather boots from Fendi, or was that Gucci, Pucci or Prada. A bargain at twice the price, according to Jason. We saw one woman – well, we saw her oversized sunglasses (think Olsen twin). She was so thin she was merely a shadow and easily missed as she moved sideways around the corner. Even the window mannequins weren't your run of the mill showroom dummies, decked out in avant-garde adornments or sporting a stormtrooper helmet.

But with so many tourists, even in the low season, it was difficult to get that perfect Instagram or Facebook picture. Jason's rule of thumb is that you have three seconds to snap that shot before some other tourist sticks their head in the way, except in Florence where you only have two seconds. All along the Ponte Vecchio, people pose as if everyone in the twenty-first century are models, a YouTube/Facebook/Instagram sensation - it's no longer good enough to be a star, you need to go viral.

Staying in the more suburban areas of Florence we got to experience the “real” Tuscany. Our Air B&B host could speak perfect English, but, as he was later to inform us, his mother pretends to speak English. This became fairly evident within a few minutes of chatting to her. But we did ascertain that she could speak French. So between our pigeon French, her pigeon English and a little Spanish thrown in for good measure, we were able to have a conversation (of sorts).

Likewise, outside the Galleria dell' Accademia, where the famous Michelangelo statue of David is housed. We found ourselves speaking Spanish to two Colombian women, English to a Russian guy and an Iranian guy (who by the way thought that we were Dutch or German). Even the Colombian women thought we were from Austria until we whipped out Google Maps and pointed to Brisbane, and then the pennies dropped.

The Colombian women had been waiting since 6am to get into the museum, which opened at 8:15am. We'd heard of getting to the airport two hours before departure, but a museum! We had read that the lines can be three hours long. So Jason insisted that we leave home at 7am, make the 30 minute walk to the museum and be there at least 45 minutes before opening. Ricky scoffed at him and reminded Jason that almost everything that we had read on the online forums was either inaccurate, grossly exaggerated or pure mis/dis-information. Needless to say, when we got to the museum, there wasn't a queue, except for the two Colombian women trying to stay warm in the morning cold and foggy weather.

As we entered the museum and laid eyes on the colossal statue of David we were struck with awe. A statue that had been sculptured from marble over 500 years ago stood in front of us. The life-like nature of the artwork, with veins popping out of his hands and arm, made it feel like you were watching a person posing (naked) for the crowd. Surrounding us were a group of women examining one particular part of David's anatomy, David's doodle. One woman commented saying that David had great knees which was met with “he has knees, does he?”. Many of the art critics discuss the dimensions of David's doodle claiming that Michelangelo adopted classical conventions on sculpting the male form. Certainly, David's hands are not in proportion to the rest of his body.

The following day was rinse and repeat: get up early and wander into the city centre to queue for the Uffizi Gallery. Jason's strategy once again got us to the head of the queue. The wait was well worth it. The collection includes an impressive range of masterpieces from antiquity and the Renaissance period, housed in one of the many Medici palaces.

Most people only spend a short amount of time in Florence. We're glad that we spent a little more time and got to experience the beauty and charm of this Renaissance city.

Next stop: Rome.Read more