Zoe On Tour 2013: 3 short days...

I love Florence, its the best place I've been, but now we have to leave

However I won't forget what we've done

Visited the brilliant, interactive, Leonardo Di Vinci Museum
Visited the great and interesting Academia Museum
Visited the OK, packed with tourists, Uffizi Museum
Visited the terrible, staid, Galileo Museum
Chimed in with the great ICE CREAM Festival
Bought new boots
Explored Florence

We started our trip with the Leonardo da Vinci museum.

It consisted of 5 rooms, each better than the last, full of different inventions that Leonardo made. I loved it because it was full of information, but also very interactive - I could test Archimedes screw, I could build Leonardo's bridge. The museum pulled information and interactivity together in the perfect balance. For this reason it was a fantastic measum.

here are some pictures.

The world famous Zoelisa

This was one of my favourite inventions, a fire is heated with this contraption on top, the fan is spun by the hot air - this connects to the spit then turns it, the hotter the fire, the faster the turn!

This is Leanardo's breathing apparatus.

A form of dividing up pictures, making them Eisner to draw

The Academia Museum and gallery holds the world famous statue of David. The statue was one of Michelangelo's best works and a revolutionary work of art...

My 3 favourite things in the Academia were,

1. The Stradivarius viola

This viola is the oldest unaltered Stradivarius in existence. It was made for Lorenzo Medici (one of the members of the famous Medici family). The reason this viola is the highlight of the gallery for me, is because this viola is completely intact, nothing has been replaced, not the bridge or the fingerboard, nothing. They also have there several other Stradivarius instruments, a violin cello and a violin to name a few. However these have bits replaced and are not entirely original.

2. The statue of David

The statue of David is an awesome statue. According to me,(and others) the best in existence. It was made by Michelangelo and banged around a lot in its time. Its arm has been lopped of and it's covered in rain streaks. Poor David! However it's arm has been replaced and he has been thoroughly scrubbed, and, to improve its appearance greatly, they've put it at the end of a long cream coloured corridor with a slit of light at the end, it was BEAUTIFUL. We saw 3 exact copies of David around Florence- I wonder how they did that...

David

3.The plaster gallery

The plaster gallery was an area of the Museum totally dedicated to the art of plaster models. These modules were the work source of some very famous artists.

The process was explained to us in a video. First a clay model is made then plaster would be spread on. A little while later they would cut it apart, make a new Batch of plaster and fill the mould. Chip off the mould and hey presto, plaster model!

With this plaster module they could make there metal or marble statues again and again with the same model, you can also scale your statue correctly to make an enormous version if you wanted to. Some statues I have seen are as big as 3 daddy's on top of each other!

After walking in the streets of Florence for a while, I spotted, tried on, oooed an aaahed and finally decided to buy some awesome

boots!!!

on the way home we stumbled across ( totally be accident. ; ) honest!)...

THE GREAT ICE CREAM FESTIVAL

We have 15 ice cream vouchers to use up and I'm ecstatically happy

We ate almost all of them!

The ones we didn't use we gave to a nice Australian couple with 2 kids,they took them gratefully and with many On my GOD!!!' s and thank you's

SO MUCH FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And now... GREEK JUSTICE by ANNEMARIE DEMBO (guaranteed - All statues stolen by Italians outside Palazzo Vecchio).

Greek justice

The statues of David and of Hercules are at the entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio. They represent spiritual strength (David) and physical strength (Hercules).

In the picture, Drew represents a kid with an umbrella.