Day 13: Florence

Today is our day to go to the Uffizi…we made reservations last Thursday and this—Wednesday at noon--was the first time available. The weather has cooled off but this morning the sun is peeking through. We walk over the Ponte Vecchio, make a stab at visiting the Palazzo Vecchio, but it is too crowded and we don’t really have enough time. We walk back to the church of Orsanmichele and walk around the outside, looking at the statues in all the niches—all provided by the various guilds in Florence. The list of sculptors is like a Who’s Who of the early renaissance, including Ghiberti, Donatello and Brunelleschi. Unfortunately the doors are locked, even though the church is supposed to be open; I think I had read that the church was having trouble coming up with the money to hire staff to open the church.

We do a little window shopping and have a snack before getting on line at the Uffizi. There is a short line for those with 12 noon reservations…but the line for people without reservations is now three hours long. It takes about a half hour for us to get into the museum….the guards have a system of allowing a certain number of visitors in at a time and we have to go through metal detectors. Once inside, we jump into an elevator (avoiding the long flights of stairs) and get ready for the Uffizi.

We start out using The Rough Guide and Rick Steves to help us sort through the collection….our first stop is Giotto. We find that we have become a lot more knowledgeable over the years and we stop at many pictures that are not included in the books’ itineraries. We have become better acquainted with painters like Lippi, Ghirlandaio, del Sarto, etc. and we pay attention to their works and others. The Uffizi is overwhelming however….the pictures keep coming at you—Botticelli, da Vinci, Raffaello, et al….it is hard not to get overloaded.

We do a pretty good job in keeping track of where we are…we are thrown a couple of times when pictures have been moved or are out on loan. One Adoration of the Magi by Gentile da Fabriano has been moved to a more prominent spot to highlight its restoration…..even though it is placed at the end of the gallery (after the Titians and Rembrandts), it is so striking and colorful that we stop and admire it.

We end up being in the museum for over two hours but finally our legs wear out and fatigue sets in….but we leave feeling very good about the visit and completely amazed at the art we have seen.

We eat lunch back at the apartment….and as we finish, it begins to rain and storm—the worst it has been since we arrived. The rain subsides about five, but it is still not very pleasant. I decide to make a quick trip to the large Edison Bookstore at the Piazza della Repubblica to buy some new Italy maps (new editions of the TCI Atlante Stradale have just been published) and to buy a souvenir book about Florence. There are a lot of shoppers out on the streets despite the unpleasant weather….and I enjoy my outing.

Dinner tonight is at Pandemonio, a place where we had a memorable lunch five years ago, sitting in their almost empty covered garden on a rainy day. The restaurant is just in back of Santa Maria del Carmine (on our side of the river) so we take our trusty “D” bus to get there. The garden isn’t open tonight—too cool—but the inside room is very pleasant. The clientele is a mix of foreign tourists and Italians and it is about half full. The menu is very inviting, but we notice that the prices are a good deal higher than they were five years ago. We have a bit of a shaky start….when I taste the wine (a local Chianti from the Colli Florentini) that I have ordered, I think it is spoiled. I ask the boss to taste it and he doesn’t seem to agree, but invites me to order another bottle anyway.

The food is mostly excellent…..Diana is very happy with her spaghetti with artichokes and a tagliata—slices of steak served on a bed of rucola - and my tortelli filled with potatoes and served with a sausage and mushroom sauce is amazing. My secondo—fried chicken and zucchini—is half good…the zucchini is fried beautifully but the chunks of boneless chicken breast pale in comparison to the fried chicken we have had in Lucca. Dessert is a very delicious mousse-like chocolate cake. The wine we end up with is excellent….a Rosso di Montepulciano 2001 from Fattoria del Cerro. The place is very professionally run and we enjoy our dinner very much….the bill comes to Euro 117.00 which is higher than our usual dinner bill.

The taxi that they call for us comes quickly and we are back at Lungarno Torrigiani, 33 in five minutes.