The line at the Accademia, where the statue of Michelangelo’s David is housed, is long. Really long. The doors open at 9:00, and we got there around 8:50, and the line for the reserved entry was already fifty people deep, and the non-reserved line was even longer. By the time we came out around 11:30, the non-reserved line was around the corner, a half-block long.

We did get in around our reserved time of 9:00, and it turns out the Accademia is not all that big. We spent two hours there and covered the entire museum. The big draw is David, and there are always a bunch of people crowded around him. In the same hall are Michelangelo’s Prisoners statues – sculptures that he never finished that look as if they are escaping or are trapped in the marble block. That makes that hall the main attraction.

But there are other halls and exhibits, and I liked those as well. They have a small separate wing dedicated to musical instruments, including a very odd keyboard/guitar combination for which it was not fully clear how it worked. They had a special exhibit hall showing collected works of a circa-1400 painter, Giovanni dal Ponte. His works were mostly religious in nature, and you could see some hints of the Renaissance in his work. It was interesting to see him treat the same subject (like the Annunciation) multiple times in slightly different ways. One of his paintings of the Annunciation was the subject of a short film in the museum on restoring artwork, and it was impressive what a difference cleaning and restoring made.

Most of the other six or seven galleries were made up of religious paintings, and so we had a good time trying to figure out the stories being told or the saints included in the picture. One of my favorite ones was of Jesus, where above the main subject were small pictures of scenes from the Passion, in the form of disembodied hands and faces and such; so, for example, you had just the hand of Peter holding a sword, cutting off the ear (and just the ear is shown) of the high priest’s servant.

After the museum, we grabbed sandwiches from a shop, and then ate them in Piazza Santissima Annunziata, a square surrounded by entirely Renaissance architecture, with an orphanage, a church, and a hospital all from around the same time. It was a pleasant space to sit, and we took our time.

We then wandered the town a bit looking for a specific gift or two to buy, but failed to find what Regina was looking for. We did, however, find gelato. That wrapped up Florence for us, or so we thought, so we went and retrieved our luggage from the convent, where they had kindly let us store it for a few hours, and we made our way along the twenty-minute walk to the train station.

We were headed to Venice next, so we walked up to a ticket machine to buy tickets, and discovered the next train was in three hours, at 4:00. So we had some time on our hands. These things happen when you travel. Much later, Meredith realized there were two different ticket machines for the two different train companies, so it is possible we could have gotten an earlier train from the other line, but we had no idea.

At any rate, we sat outside on the curb for a little over two hours. Regina and Meredith N. went shopping (and found some things), and we were able to help out a nice German man whose phone was out of charge. I had my charged laptop, so I let him charge off of that, while we chatted with him. He was in Florence visiting a friend, and then was going to Milan to meet his girlfriend, and then on to Croatia. He was working on an advanced degree in classical archaeology. He charged his phone for about twenty minutes, was very grateful, and then went his way.

After Meredith N. and Regina got back, Meredith and Jacob wandered off to browse. Jacob found some things as well, and so we passed the time. It was not an efficient use of two-plus hours, but it was not wasted either.

The train to Venice took two hours, and we got settled in our very swanky hotel. It is a Best Western brand, but it is not like any I have stayed in anywhere in the States. Our room is a three-room suite with gold wallpaper, and the hotel is right on a canal. Great location.

We got a recommendation from the man at the desk on where to go to eat, and while we did not find his restaurant (never a surprise in serpentine Venice), we did get off the beaten path and found an excellent restaurant, where we ate a very leisurely meal, outside, next to a canal, as evening very softly fell. The lights came out and Venice became magical. So, while we did not do any official sightseeing or touring, it was a great introduction to Venice.