Italy Trip - Day Eight

Wednesday May 23rd

I woke up after 9 am and grabbed a croissant and cheese from the hotel. I headed to the Baptistery and Duomo again since they are in the middle of Florence and it is easy to find everything from there. I had a 10:30 am reservation at the Accademia. It was the first academy of drawing in Europe and it houses Michelangelo's David. There was huge line for those without reservations and a smaller line for reservations. Inside, I saw Giambologna's the Rape of the Sabine Women. I assumed this was the original and the one I'd seen the day before in the Loggia dei Lanzi off the Piazza della Signoria was the copy. But it turns out this was the plaster and the one outside was the original.

I took some pictures of that sculpture and some musical instruments, including a couple made by Stradivarius! I walked into the third room and gasped a little as I saw David at the end of the hallway. I took two pictures and then a guard yelled that photos were not allowed in the gallery. There were no signs anywhere that I could see, and no guards had stopped me from taking pictures in the first two rooms. I guess they just have an issue with people taking pictures of David. When you get right up next to him, there is a very small sign that says 'no photography'. He is 17 feet tall and on a 5-6 foot platform, so if you are right next to him, you have to crane your neck a little. I marvelled at the detail in his right forearm, where there is a vein that travels out to his hand. I bought some things in the gift shop and headed back towards the Baptistery and Duomo.

My Uffizi reservation was for 1:30, so I had time to wander a bit. Ponte Vecchio is where I headed, which is a bridge over the Arno river and the only one spared by the Germans during World War II. There are small shops lining the bridge and most of them sell jewelry. On the other side of the bridge, I stopped to check my email and then headed back on Ponte Santa Trinita. Getting into the Uffizi was a bit confusing, but once inside I climbed four flights of stairs and looked at some busts of various members of the Medici family. There are tons of portraits lining the outer halls of the gallery, including ones of Machiavelli, Dante and several Ottoman sultans. My main reason for visiting the Uffuzi was to see the Botticelli room with his paintings Primavera (Spring) and The Birth of Venus. I also saw two versions of Adoration of the Magi, one by Rosselli and an unfinished version by DaVinci. The last major work I saw was Caravaggio's shield depicting the head of Medusa.

I headed back to my hotel for a nap, walking through the market Porta Rossa on the way. After my nap, I had dinner in my room and watched quite a bit of Italian television. Spongebob is still funny in Italian! While watching CNN, I saw two different ads for cities vying to host the 2014 Olympics, PyeongChang, South Korea and Sochi, Russia. Salzburg, Austria is the only other city in contention, and the final vote will be on July 4, 2007.

Day Nine