Florence

Yes, long day again today. And, again tough on the legs and feet, albeit in a different way. I went to the Uffizzi musuem and waited for 4 (FOUR!) hours in line. Once I got in, I was done in about an hour and a half (I had to rush off for an appointment time at another museum).

Famous paintings: Botticelli's Birth of Venus & something Primavera. Waiting in line, I got to practice my French because the girl behind me was French and there was an Italian woman in her 30s with her mom and the woman spoke better French than English. So we all spoke in French. We took turns in lineand on my 1/2 hour off, I went to the Ponte Vecchio (which is just a bunch of jewelry stores sitting haphazardly on a bridge) and the front of Pitti Palace (Piazzi Pitti). The gardens would have cost me 6E (and not the 3E reserved for EU students), and since I had about 10 minutes left in my 1/2 hour, I said screw it. The palace is pretty ugly anyway. Not just sour grapes. Who builds a palace and makes it look like that?

So then the Uffizzi. It was alright. Aside from the Botticellis and some da Vincis, there was that famous shield of Medusa's decapitated head. It was alright.






Ponte Vecchio














And on the bridge, jewelry shops. Apparently they used to have butcher shops up and down the bridge, until the blood on the streets and dripping into the river got too gross.















Doesn't it look a little haphazard?










Piazzi Pitti
I told you, ugly.