Florence

From Cinque Terre, E and I parted ways with S: he went to his conference in Barga, and E and I took a train to Florence. We arrived on a Sunday afternoon (6/15), checked into our Wimdu flat, and went straight to the Uffizi, where we met up with our friend L from back home. I didn't take my camera, because I had read photos weren't allowed, although that didn't seem to prevent anyone else from snapping shots of the abundant Botticellis, Michaelangelos, and Titians.

The Uffizi is huge and a little overwhelming--the kind of museum that's best spread out over multiple visits, to comfortably view a small portion at a time. For me, the highlight was the ornately painted ceiling throughout the top floor; had the galleries been empty, the ceiling alone would have made the visit worthwhile. As for the rest of the art, like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, it looks better in photos than from behind the heads of a gazillion other tourists.

We left the Uffizi after 2.5 hours--earlier than we'd planned--to chase a costumed parade that we had seen through a window: folks dressed in Renaissance garb, playing drums and horns, making their way to a re-creation of a Renaissance football game. We never quite managed to navigate around other tourists to catch up with the parade, but the effort got us wandering into the piss-scented garbage-dumpster-filled back streets of east central Florence, where eventually, to our delight, we emerged into a small plaza a block away from a small open supermarket (on a Sunday afternoon! Clearly, Italy isn't Germany). We bought food for dinner, made a brief detour to gawk at the exterior of the synagogue, then walked all the way back to our flat on the west side of central Florence to make dinner with L.

Florence Day 2 was a Monday, when many museums are closed. That didn't keep us from occupying ourselves in art and architecture. In a nutshell: rain and clouds, Campanile (416 steps up and down), Da Vinci Machines Museum, vegetarian tourist lunch (pasta), bright sunshine, Baptistery, Arno stroll, dingy public restroom experience (a pricey Euro, but for that one gets a slip of paper with a customer number, plus they had both soap and toilet seats), spiritually cleansing gelato (me: maracuja and chocolate; E: black cherry and hardcore caffe), Forte di Belvedere (we weren't planning to go, but we spontaneously followed a sign), Boboli Gardens (likewise), nut and candied fruit torrone (marshmallow of the gods), Duomo, Brunelleschi's dome (463 steps up and down, with a gallery walk that awakened my inner acrophobe), then back to our Wimdu flat (TV! Internet!) for a few hours of World Cup soccer. We had a little neighborhood excitement in the evening: a water main broke, so no one on the block had running water. A helpful bartender in the corner pub sold us some Acqua Naturale cheap so we could brush our teeth.

Campanile. We started our second day here because, amazingly, there were no lines.

Going up

A small fraction of the Duomo exterior. The lavish pink, green, and white marble is, um, intense.

Red rooftops

More red rooftops

Rain over red rooftops

Synagogue

Somehow, looking at all those red rooftops, E managed to spy a cat.

Baptistery ceiling. Satan is chowing down on sinners in the panel to the right of Jesus's feet.

Shiny

Baptistery floor

Ponte Vecchio. The tree floating on the Arno had a mannequin in it and was part of an art installation.

Uffizi

Pool of lime Jell-o in Boboli Gardens

Modern art says "antiquity" in Boboli Gardens

Duomo entrance. Note the lute-playing angels below the clock and to the right

Looking up at Brunelleschi's dome

Duomo detail

We waited in line for almost an hour to climb the dome

It was very windy at the top. The railings were low enough to make me cling to the walls.

A copy of David in front of the Palazzo Vecchio

Ceilings in the Pallazzo Vecchio courtyard