Advertisement
The duomo
You can't believe how tightly this building is squeezed into the middle of the city! Hi everyone!
No, we're still not ready to come home.....Here is a bit of Brenda's journaling for today though;
Our earliest morning so far…we were up, with breakfast down, day bags packed, lunches made and cameras charged and in the car by 07:50. Quite a feat, considering that only 1 person fits in the bathroom at a time, and you can only squeeze 2 in the kitchen if one person agrees to hold their breath. So, we are off, again not quite knowing what to expect. Gene managed to drive though crazy traffic with no real lanes, brave pedestrians, motorcycles that go between cars at ALL angles & streets with no name-signs. The drivers are all quite nice, but trying to follow the snooty lady on the GPS is a bit frustrating, as Italy has recently made some of the 2 way streets into 1 way streets and no one told our GPS lady! More than once, she arrogantly announce that we must turn left here, only for us to be looking at 3 lanes of oncoming traffic filling the street-obviously a one-way. Gene finally found parking that was outside of the ring road (illegal for tourists to drive
The Batistry Doors
These doors are carefully sculpted and very impressive. inside of) and we unloaded our stuff. We hoofed it down narrow cobble stone streets to the Acadamia, but we were warned that the line was already at least 2 hours long. We quickly found the front of the line and squeezed in the door by waving our internet reservations in the air. WOW, we could not believe how valuable that preplanning had been!
Finally inside, we listened to our museum phones and stared at HUGE paintings. One interesting painting was actually done by 2 different artists, and once we knew, we could see the differences in style. We wandered through until we got to the room with The David. It really is more impressive than one would think, with his own skylight- and the incredible size and height, the statue really is awe inspiring. Many of the paintings start to blur together (especially since they all have the same subject matter & similar styles), but all of us enjoyed the statue room. The people were much more realistic and had a lot of personality, such as a sleeping baby, children playing with pets and friends laughing. Kaela’s favorite statue was the mother & child with a wild cat
The Uffizi
Of course this photo doesn't do justice, but you can get a feel for the front of the Uffizi museum and the crowds outside. wrapped around them, Savana & Noah liked the boy playing with his dog. On our way out of the museum we bought prints of Italy. We know they are not valuable art, but we like them.
We wandered the picturesqe streets toward the spectacular Duomo, it is so large and gorgeous that it seems dropped into the middle of the busy city. It almost doesn’t fit!
We had a picnic on the steps near the striped Baptistry and watched the crowded city go by. We went and looked at the baptistery doors (the gates to heaven) and headed towards the Ponte d’Vechio. Savana bought a shot glass of Florence. Kaela got a kick out of the street vendors. They lay their goods out on the sidewalks, but then when the polizia wander by, they casually close-up “shop” and wander off. A few blocks down, the same vendor drops his stuff on the ground again begins catching tourist money again. We stopped to take pictures in statue square, and even saw 2 sets of wedding parties taking photos. We did not have time for the Uffizi, which made the kids happy, but Gene & I were sorry to miss it.
Deadly Steep
Just for fun I thought I'd throw in a few more photos of Cinque Terre. These are the stairs into the first town. After the sticker shock of the jewelry on the Ponte d’Vechio, we went to the Science museum. We met Karen, an energetic museum employee who was happy to answer our many questions about the old science tools and experiments. She even showed us how some of the machines worked and what they proved. A few of the most interesting were Galileo’s actual Telescopes, the 10 ft. tall amillary sphere made as a wedding present by Santucci for one of the Medicis, the incline plane with bells to prove speed of acceleration, the reflective picture on a cylinder, the double rising cone and a model of Archimedes’ water screw. Galileo’s finger was also in a glass bottle.
We got lost on our walk back to the parking garage, I twisted my ankle and crashed to the cobblestone (in seconds I had 4 Italian people picking me up and lecturing me about being careful), and Savana finally ran out of steam-we were exhausted. When we finally got to the car, the trip home was uneventful. I tried to fry pizza dough for dinner since we had no oven, by deep fat frying it was more effective. Tomorrow we have a much needed
What OSHA
In Italy, you're on your own for safety! beach day
Advertisement
Tot: 0.085s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0501s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
G'ma Edie
non-member comment
Wow
I love your blogs, hang onto your every word and feel like I am experiencing it with you. Thanks for the awesome detail. My only regret is that I didn't stow myself away in your baggage and make the trip with you. You know how to experience the real Italy. Love You, Grandma Edie