I woke bright and early the following morning and after a quick breakfast in the hotel restaurant headed out to walk into town again as I had 3 more tours booked with Artviva for the day. 
The first which started at 9.30am was ‘The Original Florence Walk’, a 3 hour tour which took us to several churches to see the frescoes and statues, to the Piazza della Signoria which contains the Palazzo Vecchio, the Uffizi Gallery, the Loggia dei Lanzi, Palace of the Tribunale della Mercanzia, the Uguccioni Palace, the grand fountain of Neptune and of course, most famously a copy of the statue of Michelangelo’s David. The Loggia has many fabulous sculptures including a favourite piece of mine, the marvelous Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna and Benvenuto Cellini’s bronze sculpture of Perseus. Finally we went to the Duomo where we heard more history and stories of the Medici’s and got to look at the fantastic art. Our guide was Cynthia and she was very entertaining and informative, and was also kind enough to suggest other places to visit and gave me a recommendation for a jeweller so I could get some charms for my bracelet. Once the tour finished I went for quick look round the shops, bought a pannini for lunch and made my way back to the office for the second tour of the day.
This tour was ‘Masterpieces of the Uffizi Gallery’ and was conducted by Christina. Also taking the tour were the husband and wife couple that I had gone on the Oltrarno tour with. It gave us easy access to the Gallery (no 3 hours of queuing to get in) and we got to see the best of the Renaissance art housed within. Christina is an art historian so she also showed us other works of art that she felt were worth checking out and then suggested many others that we should see before we left. It was amazing to see such fantastic works as the ‘Birth of Venus’ and ‘Primavera’ by Botticelli in real life. I really enjoyed the tour, but the heat and all the walking was beginning to take its toll, especially as the Uffizi has a lot of stairs. I could have happily spent all afternoon in the Uffizi, but of course I had booked another tour and had to get back to the office to pick it up (the worst part of the tours was always ending up miles away from the office and having to walk back again). On the way out I bumped into the mother and daughter couple from the previous night’s tour and had a chat with them before they headed off to see the Pitti Palace. En route I stopped in Oro Due, the jeweller that Cynthia had suggested and bought a beautiful Florencian Iris set with a ruby for the stunningly cheap price of £55. It is an old fashioned artisan shop selling gold in the old way, the price is dependent on the level of craftsmanship and the price of gold bullion on the day. They have many stunning pieces and will definitely be one of my places to visit the next time I go to Florence.
Finally I made my way to join the last tour of the day ‘The Original David Tour’. I have to admit I did think about dropping out of this as I was quite tired from all the walking by then and wasn’t sure I could manage the walk up to the Accademia dell’Arte but Christina was taking this tour too and she talked me into going. Boy was I glad I did. Having seen the copy in the Piazza della Signoria I have to admit I wasn’t overly impressed by Michelangelo’s David, and wasn’t expecting anything much different with the original. However, once again at least with the tour I didn’t have to queue for hours. On the approach to what must be the most famous statue in the world, there are other statues by Michelangelo, namely ‘The Captives’ that are in various stages of completion. It is fascinating to see the figures emerging from the marble, as if rising from a bath. The figures were commissioned to go round the tomb of Pope Julius II. Originally there were supposed to have been 40 of them, a feat that Michelangelo could never have managed in his lifetime, although he accepted the commission anyway. Once you have passed these immense figures you finally get through to the alcove that David stands in. I will admit to being completely astonished at my reaction to the statue. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life and it almost reduced me to tears. After listening to Christina’s talk on the statue I spent a good 40 minutes just walking round it examining in detail the 18ft creation. Every part of it is exquisite, so perfectly carved that he looks as if he is just about to step off the pedestal at any moment, almost alive. Once I had recovered enough to move on I visited another room of various and generally rather good sculptures before finally leaving.
Walking back I stopped first for a lager at a roadside café and then for a large and lovely ice cream - hazelnut, tiramisu and straticelli. I had decided to make my way back over to Oltrarno and have dinner in another of the Piazza della Passera restaurants. As I walked towards the Ponte Vecchio I found another jewellers, Saccardi, selling charms at exceedingly reasonable prices and after a discussion with the owner purchased a small Ponte Vecchio and statue of David for less than £80! Definitely a bargain when a few minutes later I found the same charms for over 3 times the price in a jewellers on the Ponte Vecchio.
I wandered through the Oltrarno, browsing the shops and enjoying the completely different atmosphere to the other side of the river and eventually found 4Leoni. As it was fairly early I managed to get a table without too much trouble although it was at the back of this very popular restaurant (they have an extensive collection of pictures of the famous people who have eaten at this marvelous restaurant). The menu was completely in Italian but by now I was recognizing a few words and so managed to order my meal without any trouble. To start I had parma ham and melon with rustic bread, followed by tagliatelle pasta with black truffles. I decided to have some more of the Vernaccia di San Gimignano to go with it. Shortly after I sat down the table next to me was filled with an English couple who, I found out, once I got talking to them were on their honeymoon. They had been to Venice and Rome and were heading to Siena the following day. Obviously I got talking to them about the wedding and Siena in general and soon I was showing them the photos on my camera. At the end of the meal I didn’t want a dessert, already having had the ice cream earlier, so instead had a Limoncello. Then I slowly wandered back over the Ponte Santa Trinita, but by now I’d been out of the hotel for about 15 hours and had walked about the same number of miles and was completely knackered. So instead of the intended 3 mile walk home I found a taxi in the Piazza Santa Trinita. The taxi dropped me at the hotel and after quickly dropping my stuff off in the room I wandered down to the bar from the previous night where I had a glass of wine and ‘chatted’ to some of the people there. However, I really was shattered so I soon made my way back to the hotel and went to bed.
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