Fourth Day - Venice and Florence

September 23rd, 2008

Melanie and I gave our 24 hour vaporetto passes to Mom and Rose, that way they could cruise up the Grand Canal to the train station with carrying their luggage across the city. Melanie and I walked to the train station; we choose a new route back across the city, trying to meander near sights we hadn't seen yet. Even though Venice seems to be just a couple miles wide, there is a lot to see. Since we brought only carry-on bags to Italy, it was easy to walk with everything on our backs.

At the train station we boarded a Eurostar train for Florence. Our reserved seats were in second class, but they seemed nice to me. We left in late morning, and got to Florence in early afternoon; there were only three stops along the way. I think travel by train is the way to go - buses are cheaper, but they get slowed down by traffic congestion; we saw how much slower the buses were later in the trip when took one to Siena, and rode one to Tivoli.

In Florence we got the keys to our apartment and dropped off all the bags. Click here to see the apartment we rented in Florence. Rose decided to rest in the apartment because her back was hurting, so Melanie, Mom and I went out to Santa Maria Novella. Our research before the trip let us know about the obelisks in Italy, - we wanted to see as many of them as possible. There are two obelisks in the piazza of Santa Maria Novella, and another one by the Pitti Palace in the Boboli Gardens. Apparently, the citizens of Florence used to race carriages around them at Santa Maria Novella, the obelisks marked each end of a race course. The obelisks are supported on the backs of turtles. I noticed a lot of turtle sculptures throughout Florence, but I never read any explanation for that. The symbol of Venice is the winged lion. Is the symbol of Florence a tortoise??

We stopped for a gelato and then returned to the apartment in the late afternoon. We walked over to the world famous Uffizi art museum, and learned that it was open late that day. At the time, the entrance line was about an hour wait. So we went to a pizzaria and had an early dinner. Then I stood in line while the others walked around the outside of the Uffizi. There are sculptures of famous artists and scholars standing in niches along the wall of the Uffizi. Rose snapped a photograph of most of them; I have pasted those photos into one big image (click the last photo thumbnail on this page to see it).

No photographs are allowed inside the Uffizi. There is a gigantic amount of artwork on display there, most of it arranged in chronological order - which means some of the older, pre-Renaissance art work is displayed first. This stuff isn't as good, it is better to skip the first few rooms and go straight to the good stuff.

We rented an audio guide, but I was truly disappointed by the limited amount of information in that guide. Often times, it would only offer brief descriptions of some of the paintings in a room, while remaining silent on many of the other masterpieces on display. Often times it was difficult to figure out which painting was being discussed: "Look at the Caravaggio..." but my knowledge of classical artwork is limited, so I didn't know which painting was the Caravaggio. I guess the best approach is to get a book out from the library before you go, and read up on the treasures of the Uffizi, that way when you get in the museum you can better appreciate what you are seeing. Click here to see the official Uffizi website.

Linking the rooms of paintings are two long halls lined with sculptures. It takes a long time to go through the entire museum, I was tired by the end. There are additional museum works on display on the lower level on the way out, but I mostly skipped those temporary exhibits as I made my way to the exit. The Uffizi is probably best seen over multiple visits, rather than trying to see the entire enormous exhibit all at once, but since a return is unlikely (though we would love to get back there), we tried to see as much of the Uffizi as we could in our single visit.