Hello, I have some concerns regarding a future trip I booked. The trip is in Florence (I'll be there for 2 days - being 1st and 2nd of November).
I did not know about Free Museum Sundays until after I had booked my plane ticket/stay. I want to utilize these days as much as possible (it's how I usually do travel, planned out itinerary and stick to it as much as possible, save a ton of google maps places and divide them into days and try to see as much of those saved spots as possible.)
I've been looking at the Firenze Card and while it's an excellent choice for museum enjoyers as a whole, my stay in Florence is too short to be able to utilize its worth. Then I looked around and I saw that there's Free Museum Sunday - providing free entrance and not allowing you to book visits in advance - so it is first come first serve. The Duomo complex (Piazza del Duomo) is one of the main attractions I want to visit (I'll be getting the Brunelleschi Pass which includes a visit of the Dome, Bell Tower, Baptistery, Museum and Santa Reparata for a price of 30€) which is not eligible for the Free Sunday and I'll be booking this for the early morning on Saturday. Now my dilemma is, and I'm hoping some people who have experience with this or local people can help me in my decision, the other 2 museums I'd absolutely not want to miss out on are Uffizi Gallery and Accademia Gallery. Both are eligible for Free Museum Sunday, and while the obvious financial choice is to visit both of these on the Sunday (2nd of November) my concern is regarding the wait times. I'd hate to be stuck in que for both of these on Sunday for 2-3 hours (I'd say 30 minutes up to 1 hour wait is acceptable) which is time I could use to explore Florence, as again, having 2 days to visit only gives me stress and FOMO on both ends - wanting to visit the museums and wanting to explore the city. My idea was to attempt getting into Accademia gallery as it seems to be more crowdy in the early AM hours (opens at 8 I believe), and then when I'm done with that (3 hours to explore all of it), I could walk around Florence and try my luck with Uffizi gallery later in the day. This gives me uncertainty for Uffizi gallery , but I would wait out Accademia gallery, tough the wait out and visit it, then could try my luck with Uffizi multiple times in the day until 3-4 pm (closes at 6:30pm, and ideally I'd enter if I'd have 2:30 or 3 hours inside, else it's not that worth, or maybe it is since it's free). The other thing I could do is book one of these (I'm guessing Uffizi gallery) for the afternoon of Saturday, just pay for it and lose out on money I could've saved (which ultimately, won't matter that I saved, if I didn't visit a place I could only visit when I'm in Florence).
So option one is visiting + paying for Duomo complex on Saturday, Free Museum Sunday Utilize on Sunday for Uffizi Gallery and Accademia Gallery .
Option two is visiting + paying for Duomo + Uffizi/Accademia on Saturday and utilizing Free Museum Sunday for the one that I won't visit on Saturday.
Option 3: safest and most expensive option - just visit accademia + ufizi by paying on saturday, and then visit Duomo on Sunday by paying since it is not on Free Museum Sunday anyway and enjoy it being less crowded due to people wanting to visit the free entry museums.
The post turned out quite long and I apologize in advance for that, but I would like to explain it as best as I can, so that I can be offered some advice while I still have time to dwell on it before there's no tickets left for anything.