Firenze - Day One

After the travails of yesterday, I was excited to get going in Florence today. CERTAIN PEOPLE were jet-lagged and slept quite late but it meant that I had a solitary and relaxing breakfast of croissants, biscotti with Nutella, yogurt, cappuccino and orange juice - don't pretend you aren't jealous. After I kept turning on an increasing number of lights in the room, Mom and Trevor woke up and we set out for the day.

First stop was to find food. We went down to the central market - a large indoor market with all sorts of food vendors. There were lots of butchers selling all sorts of meat, from chicken breast and steaks to tripe, brains, and an entire pig's head. On one side were prepared food stalls, so we got some lunch and mulled wine there.

After eating, we walked outside to the outdoor market nearby. These vendors sold lots of leather goods, jewelry, coats, scarves, etc. Mom and Trevor debated whether to buy a red or yellow leather jacket:

After a bit of shopping, we walked down towards the Arno River on our way to the Uffizi gallery. We stopped at a point along the river where there were love locks - more here than in Budapest. Most of these were not as nicely engraved, though.

We walked past the Galileo museum but didn't go in. Outside, there's some sort of elaborate crystal sundial which wasn't working because it was cloudy. We all still found our star signs/birthdays on the calendar on the ground. Here is Trevor with his astrological sign:

This was the other part of the sundial - at the top of this column was a blue crystal and the sun was supposed to shine through it and cast a light on the ground. Or something. Mostly I just liked the little lizard.

We struggled to find the correct door to enter the Uffizi, and walked around the outside of the entire museum.

Italy takes art seriously. Even the graffiti (from the Italian word "graffiato") is impressive:

Mom broke into a sprint and left us in her dust as we neared the real artwork:

We spent a couple hours touring the Uffizi - got to see some Michelangelo, Raphael, Durer, and overrated Leonardo da Vinci paintings. After the Uffizi, we walked back to the hotel and had a little down time before dinner.

We went to a recommended pizza place a few blocks from the hotel. It was small and quickly filled with locals - lots of shouting and laughing in Italian. We got some delicious pizzas which were quite large but so good! It was loud and crowded but a lot of fun. The table next to us apparently had some sort of wager about where we were from; we chatted with them briefly on our way out.

After dinner, we came home to plan for tomorrow.

Trevor chatted with Kirsten:

While I wrote this blog entry!