Our day started out a little later than we had intended, probably due to our late night last night. We had a lovely breakfast very similar to the one we had at Hotel Tivoli. We are staying at the Hotel Crocini near the Orno. Our room has 14 foot high ceilings and a funny afterthought of a bathroom in one corner. Our ceiling is encrusted with molding and even has a medallion in the center of the ceiling. Everyone here is as pleasant as can be and the person on the desk tonight even complimented my attempts at Italian.
Our first stop was the Duomo. As ornate and over the top outside as it is austere and simple on the inside, with the exception of the surperbly fashioned dome by Brunelleschi, the Duomo did not disappoint. With our passes, we were able to see the crypts which were fascinating as well as the Bell Tower and the Baptistry. We saw real dead bones in the crypt along with sections of the original floor from the 1200's. The dome, beautiful inside and out, depicts heaven and hell and rises up to a cupola in the center.
(Mom has just told me that we walked 13,482 steps today...Tuesday was over 20,000. The average for this week is about 14,000 steps a day. I get frequent updates on our steps walked due to mom's faithful pedometer, and now you will too.)
After the Duomo (read about it folks...it's an architectural wonder) we decided to climb the Campanile. I should also add that today will probably be the nicest day we will have all week. It was BEAUTIFUL today with that perfect kind of weather that you don't even notice. The climp up was a bit brutal for mama mia. With two flights to go, she told me to go ahead. The views were breathtaking (that's about 420 steps up guys) and after spending about 10 minutes up there on my own, I went down the two flights and gave mom the persuasion speech and up she came. She thoght it was well worth it and loved seeing the red tile and the laundry hanging here and there. We took our map out to see what we could see and were able to identify lots of the sites from the top of the Giotto's Bell Tower. When we were just about to head down at 11:30, the bell started to ring. I took a video of it and man it was LOUD but very happy and joyful sounding.
The Baptistry was next with golden mosaics and a couple dead guys to boot. I loved the mosaic floors and had the amazing opportunity of laying on the floor to take a great picture of the dome over the center. Really, even though some things have been crowded, we've had skip the line passes where we needed them and fast lines when we didn't have them. I have a feeling that October is a wonderful time to visit Florence due to smaller crowds. I did manage to get a pretty good picture of the gates of paradise copies without any tourists standing in front of them, which was a bit of a feat during the day.
On our quick walk to the Accademia to see the David, we ran across a museum we thought sounded interesting...the history of childhood...but we didn't go in. We just liked its piazza and the paintings it had over the door to it. We also went through the Piazza Repubblica on our way and they had a carosel and I, of course, wanted to ride it so I did.
We arrived at the Accademia and had lot of helpful people help direct us to the right line (this is trickier than it seems) and then we were in!
So much has been written about David. I'll just say that he is a thing to behold. I enjoyed the Rape of Sabine and the few Botticellis, the Prisoner series of sculptures by Michaelangelo and the Portelli Immaculate Conception. The plaster casts were pretty great along with all the golden icons. The museum itself is historic and I enjoyed reading how they built it basically to hold the David.
Deep breath folks. The Uffizi is next.
But before that, we stumbled into the Orsanmichele church, unique because it has two chaples side by side with no real one focal point. That was free so we were happy to spend a few minutes snapping pictures of its elaborate altar and stained glass windows. A quick drive by of the Priori (aka The Palazzo Vecchio) was up next and we were grateful for Jenny and Doug's advice to go in and see the bottom floor. The frescoes we saw were marvelous. The NEXT time I'm in Italy, I'll have to go back to see the rest of it.
Somewhere in there we had a double gelato. Needed that for sure.
The Uffizi guys. The Uffizi.
This museum can really be thought of as a museum of museaums. It is one, if not the, first organization ever to call itself a museum and is an amazing tribute to the idea of putting beautiful and thought provoking items on display for the public to enjoy. I loved walked the long beautiful window lined corredors and pretending I was a Victorian lady viewing the old masters. Because many a Victorian lady did just that. What did we see?
Well guys. Of course the Botticellis...both the Birth of Venus and the Primavera. Mom was excited about Boy Removing Thorn from Foot...an ancient sculpture from Greece and I about died and went to heaven (along with all those other angels we saw all over the place) when one of the very last paintings we saw was Judith Slaying Holofernus. We are hopefully going to see Judith Beheading Holoferus in Rome. So excited. We were quite sad that several galleries were closed due to changes they are making to the museum making it impossible for us to see Canaletto's painting of our dear Venice, but we saw a lot and left the museum happy but footsore. We felt like true tourists when we exited the Uffizi and decided to have dinner right there at the little Uffizi restarant at the foot of the museum that caters to tourists like us who have death-marched through Florence all day and can't walk another step. We had a carafe of wine, pasta, salad, veal, and, of course, followed everything up with gelato (Venice still wins in the gelato category). I sang Avril during dinner and mom thought about her purchases from the day which included lots of items for little people dear to our hearts.
Tonight we spent a quiet evening regrouping and making our marching plans for tomorrow.
More then! Tomorrow is a travel day! We finish up Florence and it's off to Roma!
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