... but maybe some Stendhal Sniffles. A week in Florence can induce them, and we haven't even seen everything yet. Today it was the Accademia and the David. No photo can ever do it justice; only by walking around it can you truly contemplate the mystery of Michalengelo's genius.
And this only a day after visiting the Uffizi Gallery to see all it had to offer. Parts of it can disappoint - thanks to a Mafia bombing several years ago and various crazies who have tried to slay personal demons by damaging masterpieces (including the guy who took a hammer to the David's toes), there are too many great works protected by thick glass barriers that are so poorly lit they reflect more than they reveal - but the sheer wonder of the place can still overwhelm you. The room holding Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" and his "Primavera" alone is enough, and then you discover the rooms with the Raphaels and the Da Vincis and the Filipino Lippis and the Giottos and the Rembrandts and you realize you've barely touched the surface of what's there.
Before that it was the Duomo, and the Baptistry, and the Duomo museum (the incredibly modern "Mary Magdalene" of Donatello alone is worth that visit
... except you also get to see Michelangelo's unfinished "Pieta" and the original panels from Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise"), and before that the Franciscan Basilica of Santa Croce, and ... well, the sniffles are starting again.
Those of you who have been here and every guidebook author know all this already. Hell, the ten thousand (a very rough estimate) American college students here for their junior year we keep running into on the street swigging wine straight from 75 CL bottles - along with their visiting parents yelling at us "it's worth the wait, y'all" while we mark time outside a much-acclaimed restaurant - may even know it (OK, I doubt it too). But somehow despite being surrounded intellectually and physically by all that jadedness and tourist-hellishness, the experience still ends up being fresh for those of us who were Florence virgins until this point.
So much for muddled thoughts. Now I need to blow my nose.
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