We only have 2 & a half days in Florence and are wondering about your opinion of skipping the Uffizi. Do we dare commit such a sin? We already plan to visit Accademia & the Bargello museums. Our thought is to skip the Uffizi & see the Pitti Palace & gardens instead. We will have our two year old with us & think that she may enjoy having some time to roam in the gardens, as opposed to another museum. Any thoughts?

Good thinking about the garden and your two year old daughter. Within your time frame you will be inside of museums for long periods of time as it is. Skip the Uffizi (for this trip at least) and let her romp - it's her trip too ;-)

Nina

Skip the Uffizi for now. Bring her back in 10-15 years for shopping (and the Uffizi, of course). We moved fairly quickly through the Uffizi, stopping to read about approx. one painting per room from the Rick Steves book and it took over two hours. (Of course, one could spend a lot longer there.)

I'll suggest an alternative. You can do a highlights tour of the Uffizi, having studied the Website and a guide book and book a trip through the Vasari Corridor (do a search here or on the Uffizi Website), which connects the Uffizi with the Boboli Gardens and the Pitti. The Uffizi is an amazing museum; it would be a shame to miss it.

Skip the Uffizi! The place is jammed. Your two year old will see nothing and if you are thinking of pushing a stroller through there, have mercy on others.

In fact, is art really so important to you that you need to take a 2 year old into the Pitti Palace, which is also jammed, and other important museums? Will one of you you promise to remove your child in an instant if they make any noise?

I've posted this before and gotten flak for it but I really do wish people would think about other travelers who have scrimped and saved to see these European art museums, and have gone to great effort to travel there, and suddenly they find themselves -- at last -- face to face with a great work of art they have always dreamed of seeing, and there is a baby causing no end of distraction in what otherwise should be a quiet place for serious appreciation of art.

Yes, I know tour guides make noise and other other tourists do too.

But there are dozens of things to do and artworks to see in Florence other than those in the famous and already too-crowded museums.

Take turns babysitting your baby outside if either of you must see David, or the sculptures in the Bargello. Otherwise, stick to outdoor venues or places where a very small child who understandably behaves like a very small child will not interfere with the reasons why others have made such an effort to be there. Take a day trip to Pisa and the great open grassy space in front of the beautiful tower. Go to Siena and let the baby run around the Campo.

You asked for thoughts. Those are mine.

Whatever you decide, check in advance as to whether stollers are allowed. (For example, I'd be amazed if strollers are allowed at the Borghese in Rome; when we were there, they were actually arguing with an old man about whether he could wheel his oxygen tank behind him!)

We once took one of ours to a museum in which stollers were not allowed. She would have slept in her stroller, but after a while she got tired of being held and she cried and we were asked to leave (maybe by nessundorma?)

When we were in musuems in Italy, the happiest looking guests seemed to be the babies in strollers, but I guess I hit them on a lucky day!

As another alternative, I'd also consider skipping the Accademia. Unless you're set on seeing "David," I preferred the Pitti Palace and the gardens.

If you don't mind paying the admission for a short visit, you can see David and a few other sculptures in a faily short amount of time.

LOL, missypie! You can rest assured I don't order babies out of museums. And I won't dispute your report that the happiest people you saw in museums in Italy were sleeping babies. Most people HATE going to museums and why they repeatedly force themselves to do it when they go abroad is one of life's big mysteries to me. Especially the big museums in a place like Florence where there are more than a dozen small museums and churches with unbelievably GORGEOUS treasures that you can be in and out of in 45 minutes and still have a lot to think about all day while you do something you and your kids would really enjoy instead.

I hear ya. With our three kids (15, 13 and 10), we toured the Vatican Museum and the Galleria Borghese over the course of 6 days in Rome. In Florence we toured the Academia and the Uffizi. On our last day in Venice, my husband asked "Aren't there any musuems in Venice?" I said, "Sure, but we aren't going to any of them."

I felt like we had a nice variety of musuems, art in churches, and just absorbing the cities (oh, yeah, and shopping).

missypie,

What I think is a shame is that people who are not big museum fans don't go to the less-famous, less-crowded museums of Italy, which have stunning artifacts. For instance, the National Museum of Rome has two discus thrower statues plus a handful of absolutely gorgeously Roman frescoes. The Museum of the Duomo in Firenze or the Medici Chapel is no more than an hour of one's time, but the artworks are exquisite and historical. It's just exhausting to try to take in the Uffizi all at once, being pressed on all sides by hordes of people.

I love museums, here and abroad, so when I want a different kind of vacation, I plan walking vacations in scenic places that have no museums nearby, just so I don't hear museums calling to me. (Or else I won't relax) And I deliberately visit museum-rich cities (Amsterdam, Firenze, Paris) in bad-weather season so I won't feel so badly about being indoors all the time when the piazzas and parks are calling me.

As for Venice, I advise people who are not museum addicts but are doing the Venice-Firenze-Roma route to skip the Uffizi in favor of the Accademia in VENICE. It's a great museum, whereas I find the Uffizi a pain. Despite at least a half dozen visits to Roma, I have yet to work up the enthusiasm to hurl myself at the Vatican museum, since I have heard it is practically impossible to move inside the place it is so crowded.

granted the Uffizi is world reknown, but do you like the type of art that it contains. to me the David is simply a can't miss.