firenze - florence (italian)

dan and brian admire the florentine sunset

day 2: we see florence - all of it.

dan and i used to believe that we were not "lounge around" vacationers. we thought we needed to see everything and always be active. this was until we went to hawaii last october. we are firmly "sit-by-the-pool" kind of vacationers now. so day two in italy was a shock to the system.

in an effort to hit the highlights and avoid lines we all decided that it would be good to make reservations for the major museums, the uffizi and the accademia. unfortunately the only time we could get into the uffizi was at 8:45 am. so on our vacation we woke up earlier than dan usually gets up for work.

after breakfast at a nice little cafe looking out on the piazza vecchio we headed to the uffizi. i should have remembered from my previous trip to the uffizi, and one to the prado, that 13th - 18th century religious art is not my bag. the paintings are lovely, and by the 16th century they really got shadows and light down pat. but how many pictures of one guy's death (however important) can you really look at in a day? compound that with the giant tourist groups and i was ready to go in an hour. brian and meena enjoyed the art quite a bit, as renaissance art is their bag. there was even a portait of a man that looked eerily like brian. we were through the museum and the gift shop in about 2 hours.

we had some time to kill until our next reservation at the accademia at 2pm. we took photos of the sculptures on the piazza vecchio, and had lunch. so here's the gist of our afternoon: dan and brian have been friends since they were in seventh grade. when they see each other they tend to revert back. all afternoon long meena and i were treated to butt jokes and a quote from a phish song about florence or something - i don't know. what i do know is that repetition seems to be hilarious to them. a few words in particular were repeated so often and in so many ways that meena and i wondered if it was a good idea to get them together in europe where the "ugly american" denotation is being more deeply confirmed with every "schloss" and "duomo". in fact, in the picture above, in case you can't tell, dan is saying "duomo" and brian is encouraging him. they find this endlessly funny.

so finally it is 2pm and we are tired but ready for another foray into the world of incredibly famous art, most notably the david statue. i tried to warn them that, given the 7th grade nature of our afternoon, the david's, shall we say, protruding parts might ignite fit of nervous laughter, but in the end they handled it nicely. in fact, i was the one making nudey jokes. oh well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right? on that note, here is a funny conversation i overheard while sitting on a bench behind the david.

american guy 1: dude, those 2 italian chicks just looked at us like "why are those guys staring at david's butt?"

american guy 2: it's better than the alternative.

muffled american guy laughter.

i like sculpture better than paintings by far, so the accademia was awesome for me. but alas, all good things must come to an end (insert dan and brian butt joke here) so we decided to take a quick swing around the musical instrument museum and then brian guided us to a recommended gelateria which was really good. dan couldn't believe he had been in italy for almost 20 hours and hadn't eaten gelato yet. we tried to get into the santa croce church where all the famous florentines are buried but it closed as we arrived. gelato trumps tombs in my mind anyway. so, what better to do after a long day of walking and museuming than take a hike to the top of a giant hill?

across the arno, there is piazza michelangelo, which offers lovely views of the city. we took many pictures and hopefully we will get some to people requesting photos soon. i bought several paintings from street artists, as is my tradition, and then we wanted dinner. but no. dinner isn't served, in fact most places don't open, until 8pm. so instead we decide to hike back down the hill, over the ponte vecchio (yes, i sang "o mio babbino caro" the whole way), to a wine bar. we ordered a traditional italian drink called negroni. about an hour and a half later we were plastered and walking back across the river and up the hill to our dinner reservations. we gorged ourselves, as we were unable to make coherent menu and self-control decisions, and then we decided to go to bed. one problem, the hotel is really far away and brian wants gelato. seriously, after a huge day, a huge meal and dessert, we don't take a taxi home because brian's not done eating. i would have complained but i was too full and tired to talk.

well, i think this marathon blog entry sufficiently demonstrates the marathon of a day we had. stay tuned for day 3 when a hail storm catches us unawares.