Ugh, more rain. It wouldn't be so bad if it just decided to effing rain. But, we would get a little spurt, enough to need our umbrellas, and by the time we'd get our umbrellas in the full upright and locked position, the rain would stop. I'd wait a few minutes and wrap my umbrella up in my pocket and the drizzle would begin again. Very funny, Mother Nature.
I was feeling better today though. Whether it was the rain or the Italian drugs I bummed off of Brenda, my allergies were finally starting to cease and desist. Nathalie told us yesterday that a lot of foreigners have a reaction to the cypress trees, because we don't have them in the US. Fortunately, a lot of our activities were indoors today, so the rain was tolerable. We first headed to the Uffizi (pronounced oo-feet-sy) Gallery, a famous art museum that houses hundreds, maybe thousands, of Renaissance art. One of their biggest attractions is Botticelli's Venus. If you're not familiar with it, you may well have been born under a rock. It's been reproduced on nearly every type of product you can possibly imagine. Unfortunately, we weren't able to take any photos inside the gallery, so you'll have to google it if you don't know what it is.
We made reservations ahead of time to beat the long lines, but when we got to the office to pick up our tickets, I think we would have had better luck just standing in the regular line. Only two people were in front of us, one at each window, and both of them took a good 10 minutes to get their tickets. What the hell were they doing? Good grief. We finally picked up our tickets and headed into the actual gallery entrance. Great, now we're stuck behind an Asian tour group. A sea of tiny Asians. I don't think I'm freakishly tall or anything, but in the middle of this group, I felt like g-damn Godzilla or something. These little old ladies didn't look to be over 4-1/2 feet tall, and I thought I might step on one of them and break something.
And none of them understood the security line they needed to go through. We weren't allowed to use our cameras, but we could at least bring them in. Well, security had a tray you could put your camera in while you walked through the metal detector. It felt like it took 3 hours for all of them to get their cameras off from around their necks. Wait, I had a big camera around my neck too. Did I look like that the whole time I was there? Shit.
Don't answer that.
Eventually, they had all removed cameras, purses, jackets, you name it and placed on the xray belt. But, then, they didn't understand the concept of one at a time through the metal detector. I could not stop giggling as 3 of them would try to go through at the same time (they were damn small enough), and the Italian guard would try to explain one at a time. While he was trying to reroute them, another one or two would walk through thinking it was their turn. I didn't think we'd ever make it through security. Then, when we did go through the metal detector, we got a little wink and a "lovely ladies" from the guard. Thankyouverymuch. We made a mad dash for our purses and snuck in front of the sea of Asians so we could make a bee line for the stairs.
Okay, finally, we can actually start the tour. Like any other art museum, it's chock full of paintings, sculptures and mosaics, some famous, others not so much. We had no real idea where to start or what to see, but fortunately Brenda had downloaded a few podcasts by the famous travel writer, Rick Steves. He was able to guide us through rooms full of drawings, and the dozens of rooms of paintings until we finally made it to Botticelli's Venus. Wow.
I remember spending at least one full class period in art history on this piece. What we learned, I can't remember to save my life though. But, Rick educated us on the finer points and it was pretty cool to behold. We meandered through room after room taking in all the art, including a Michelangelo painting, but I have to admit, after awhile, it all started to look the same. I never fully appreciated this style of art in my art history classes, so once we had gotten our fill, we decided it was time to hit the road. But, not before Rick, on the podcast, suggested a rest in case "our uffizis were getting tired". Oh Rick, you're so witty.
A view of the Ponte Vecchio backside from a window in the Uffizi.
That just looks dangerous.
Since we had gone to the Ponte Vecchio on Monday and a lot of the shops were closed (they like to close a lot of things on Mondays), we headed back in that direction to see if there were any other shops besides jewelry. Nope. Just pricey jewels. Dangit. It was about time for lunch, so we said a little curse as we passed the gelato lady and found a little out-of-the-way restaurant that was kind of trippy, Caruso's. They called themselves a Jazz Club & Restaurant and were playing all kinds of American music. Yet, the waitress didn't quite understand all of our English.
I ordered a margherita pizza with tomatoes and mozzarella. It wasn't my favorite pizza of the trip, but it was still good. I will still never fully grasp the idea of cutting my pizza with a knife and fork.
More pizza!!
Time to head up in the Duomo, so that meant another sweaty workout today. Considering the humidity in the air from the rain, I was going to be real perty when I reached the top. We immediately headed for the line to the cupola and found that the door was locked and no one was around. I guess they're on lunch break! So, we took the time to head inside and see what beauty lies within. I have to say that the inside wasn't quite as impressive as the outside. Maybe that's because I had seen quite a fair share of churches by now. But, don't get me wrong, just because I say it's not as impressive as a church I've seen before, it's still beautiful and inspiring.
Pretty floor.
This is the candle tree. Very pretty.
The dome.
Some of the detail outside.
We didn't spend too much time inside, probably due to how effing cold it was in there. I thought Santa Croce was bad, but I think the Duomo was even worse. I should have brought some hand warmers with me! We headed back to wait in line for the cupola and overheard that the reason it was closed was because there were too many people up top and they had to wait for some people to come down first. See, that totally makes sense. But, why couldn't there be a sign or someone there to tell us that? We went back to get in line, so we'd be the first ones up. We started a trend behind us, because it didn't take long for a nice line to form. Fortunately, it was only a 10 or 15 minute wait and they let us up. Great, more stairs. It was pretty similar to St. Peter's, although these were mostly stone stairs as opposed to some of the brick and tile that began in the Basilica.
I'm not gonna lie. It looks a bit haunted.
View of Florence through one of the windows in the ascent.
Thanks for the butt photo Nikki!
It was also broken up into two sections, ground floor to the bottom of the cupola and then the rest of the way to the top. Again, with the narrow, windy, Willy-Wonka-esque stairwells. It was ridiculous. At one point, we were going up a very tiny spiral staircase and we heard ourselves getting closer and closer to a group of people. They must be taking a break. I wondered how in the hell we'd get past them, when we realized they were coming down the stairs. What the hell? Did you chicken out? We tried to squeeze past them, but it was pretty damn impossible. The walls were damp, so I had nothing to really grab hold of if I fell.
View of the floor below from halfway up.
Up and up we went, getting more and more winded as we went. At one point the stairs were so steep I thought we were climbing a ridiculous ladder. Are we there yet? FML We also kept passing people and it was starting to piss me off. Do these people not know where the exit is? There was seriously no room for one person to go up, let alone two people to pass each other. It was one giant clusterf*ck. I can't imagine doing this in the summer when the crowds are bigger.
It's pretty damn exhausting.
WTF.
It's a bit difficult to tell by the photos if we're going up or down.
More steep stairs up!
We could see our breath on the stairs, but that didn't help to lessen the sweat sliding down my spine. I couldn finally see the exit sign to let us know we were at the top. Finally!!
Ahhhh....great views again! It wasn't as sunny as Rome was, but we were still witness to a fantastic view of the city. There wasn't a lot of room on top, shocker, but we took some time for more photo ops, including taking a photo of the attached bell tower (we decided one structure to climb was enough in Florence).
Florentine skyline.
The bell tower at the Duomo.
Lookin' a little sweaty.
That's better.
Adorable!
And, back down we went. The beginning of the descent was pretty tricky because of the steep stairs, but we made it down. We ran into more people coming up, and I realized I shouldn't have been cursing those other people before. There was only one way up and one way down at certain points, so everyone had to cross paths. Oops. We had to reassure a few people they were close to the top because they looked like they were about to pass out.
Back down. I promise.
I told you, its almost as steep as a ladder.
We headed to the Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella next, one of the world's oldest pharmacies, and a pretty damn fancy soap and perfume shop. It had some antiques showing the history, but it seemed to be just an expensive version of Bath & Body Works. We were unimpressed and decided it was about time for our gelato ration. Stracciatella was my flavor of choice. We thought it was essentially a chocolate chip ice cream, but in doing some research, it's actually their sweet cream gelato, drizzled with chocolate that hardens when it cools. The chocolate is mixed in, to make it look like our version of chocolate chip. It was damn good. One of my favorites.
We spent our gelato time eating in a small park and tried not to get pooped on by the pigeons. I could seriously go the rest of my life without ever seeing another damn pigeon. These things were not afraid of anything, and would take off and fly ridiculously close to our heads. I think they were doing it on purpose to scare the crap out of us. I was not a fan.
Sky rats.
Bold move Mr. Pigeon. Bold.
It was now time for our afternoon relaxation, so we headed back to the hotel. America's Best Dance Crew was on, and we realized that Mario Lopez, the host, was just as annoying dubbed in Italian, as he is in English!!
We picked a restaurant out of our guide books for dinner, and I wasn't super impressed with it. Nikki and Brenda, on the other hands, had some of their favorite food here. I think it was just poor food choices on my part. The name was Baldovino, and it was very close to Santa Croce. With this being our last dinner in Florence, we wanted to get two courses again, and try to really enjoy our food and wine. We did have plans to meet Daniele later for drinks, but we figured we would have plenty of time. As much as we always tried to drag out our meals, we could never make them last more than an hour.
For my first course, I got an Italian salad of mixed leaves, buffalo milk mozzarella, pesto, sundried tomatoes and pine nuts. For my second course, I got galletto ruspante al mattone or free-range chicken marinated in oil, lemon, herbs and spices, grilled with a brick on top. It took forever to get our first courses, and I was uninspired by my salad. There wasn't much pesto or tomatoes to give it flavor, it was mostly just lettuce and radicchio, or flamingo meat as Brenda's sister teases. I added some olive oil to give it some flavor, but it didn't help much.
A bit uninspiring. I should have went with a pasta.
The waiter came and took our plates and asked us if we wanted any kind of dessert and we said no. We figured he was just asking early in case we wanted to order something that might take awhile to make. We noticed that another couple was completely finished eating when he asked them about dessert.
Um, did he forget about our second courses? We were starting to panic at this point, because we had to meet Daniele, and we had no way to contact him if we were running late. We tried to flag down our server, but in typical Italian fashion, he ignored us. We even told another waiter and he seemed to understand what we were asking, but didn't seem to convey that to anyone. Eventually our waiter assured us our food would be coming out momentarily. Of course, the one time we don't have all night to wait for our food, it's late.
Mine came out and it was two breasts and two thighs of chicken on a plate. The chicken itself was good, very tender and moist, but I'm not used to eating just a plate of chicken by itself. I need something to go with it. So, not the best food experience for me tonight, but you can't win 'em all.
We found out that tomorrow marks Italy's 150th anniversary of their unification. So, tonight, they had tons of festivals and concerts going on to commemorate it. They also opened all of their museums for free for the entire night. We weren't sure how busy they would be, so we had opted to go to the Uffizi early in the morning like planned. But, now we contemplated going to Accademia Gallery to see Michelangelo's David.
They had music playing and people dancing about.
But we had to meet Daniele first. I got a little flustered in our rush to meet him and I took us down a wrong street, but we eventually made it to our meeting spot and found the infamous Daniele. He actually had the week off from work because he had to use up some vacation days. But, he wanted to meet Brendan's girlfriend, so he had set up this rendezvous for drinks. He wasn't feeling well, so we just went to a local bar called Rex where we had a few beers and got to know him. He was very sweet and very proud that he was 30 and living on his own (we all know how big of a feat that is there!) We didn't spend too much time since it was getting late and he didn't feel well.
Daniele!
Daniele insisted we go to see David since it was free. He said we had to see it before we left. Since it was free, we couldn't resist. It was only a block or two from our hotel, and the line was fairly short.
Sick of seeing the teal scarf yet? ;-)
We were quickly admitted inside, and headed right to the hallway to see David. Again, no photos allowed, so you'll have to take my word for how amazing it was. First of all, photos and text books don't prepare you for how big it was. This thing was 17 feet tall. White marble, and incredible detail. The veins in his hand, the look in his eye. Michelangelo was effing brilliant. According to Rick, the head is out of proportion to the rest of his body, but Mikey defended his work saying he made it larger so it would appear correctly from the ground where everyone would be viewing it. Smart cookie. We spent a good 10-20 minutes slowly walking around and analyzing every little feature. We were standing in the presence of something over 5 centuries old. Wow.
We were ready to head back to the hotel, but I wanted to peruse a bit more before leaving. I mean, we were here and didn't have to pay, we might as well look at what else this gallery had to offer. We didn't spend too much time, but did check out some more sculptures, paintings, etc. But, it was well after midnight, and we were beat.
I can't believe tomorrow is our last day in Florence. But, I'm looking forward to Venice and its change of scenery.
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