April 12 -- going to the Uffizi

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Our first morning in Florence.

We are a couple of dozen steps away from the front door of our apartment building.  The central market is on the right, and you can see the dome of the cathedral of Florence -- the Duomo -- above the yellow building above the yellow car.  This is an excellent location for a stay in Florence!

We didn't dawdle over the market as we usually would, because we had timed tickets to see the Uffizi.  If you are not with a tour, and you want to see the Uffizi, you need to buy tickets ahead of your visit.  We had heard that a month ahead was not too early.  We paid for our tickets in Ann Arbor, and had printed a copy of the email confirming that transaction.  We had that piece of paper with us.

You can tell the market is open -- I bet the white box being hustled into the market by the guy in the purple hat contains fish....  In Italy we saw lots and lots of white styrofoam boxes used for transporting products from the sea.

Standing in the same spot I stood when taking the previous image, turning 180 -- our door is the one visible through the second arch from the right, with the white paper taped to it.  The market building is right across the street from our building!

We were on the "first floor" -- in the US we'd call that the second floor.  Our windows were around the corner of the building, not quite visible at right, on the side of the building.  The apartment windows were up high -- we had to stand on things to open and close the shutters.  There was no view, just the buildings across the (rather narrow) street. 



Lots and lots of motorcycles here, just like Bologna.

The Duomo's dome.

Looking at the central market building.

Walking on.  The front of the Duomo.  It is all too easy to get "reality" shots rather than pretty ones.  It's hard to get far enough away from such a big building to get a good pic, and there are always pedestrians and vehicles between you and all of that marble.

This is a very heavily embellished structure!  Fancy marble, lots of carving.....

We stopped at a coffee bar for a quick breakfast.  They had lots of choices.

This stuff looks good, but didn't look like breakfast to me.

Cappuccino, and a croisant-like pastry with a citrusy cream filling.  Mmmmm.

This is a very fancy place.  Part of the ceiling.....

If you want something other than coffee, they have lots of choices.

I blurred her face; I don't have permission to have her pic.  She's a lot more elegant than I.....

This is the counter where you stand to drink your beverage and, perhaps, eat a treat.  I miss the French expectation that you will sit at a table, as long as you like, savoring your food/drink and enjoying the view, but when you need to be off, to get to the Uffizi in time, this works well.

You can add things to you coffee, if you like.  (I am wondering, now, what is in the container on the left....)

I wonder if this has always been a coffee bar....  Imagining the changing clientele, over the years......  (Thinking the curly points on the plate-holder are nicely in keeping with the look of the plate!)

Outdoor market, right outside the coffee bar.

It's gratifying when my translation and Google's are equivalent!  "The old city center:  from secular squalor restored to a new life."  (Hooray for cognates!  "Secular" and "squalor" -- easy to guess.  I like it when my guesses are correct.)

We didn't linger  here, either.

Well, not very long.  Long enough to snap a pic or two, here and there....

Fancy painting, up under the eaves....

A bunch more fancy painting!

Walking on.  You can see the green cross of a farmacia, just above the white van.

Getting closer to the Uffizi.

Getting very close to the Piazza della Signoria.  This is the Palazzo Vecchio.

Flowers in front of a ... cafe?  (I wasn't paying attention to the business, just to the flowers....)

Piazza della Signoria.  That's the Palazzo Vecchio at right.

You can tell these lions from San Marco's lion (seen so many times in Venice) -- these don't have a book, and don't have wings.....

Here is a copy of Michaelangelo's David.  The original is now indoors at the Galleria dell'Accademia, where he is safe from acid rain (and pigeons!).  (And where you can't take pics of him................)

The label here surely looks like Orgagna to me, but I think it must be Orcanga.  Andrea Orcagna (as he was known) was a prominent Florentine painter in the middle of the 14th century. Those surely look like paintbrushes, near his left foot.....

It's amazing what some people can do with marble.  The drape of the cloth........

The next pic I took was 20 minutes after I saw Andrea.

We got in line at the entrance to the Uffizi.  Luckily they have a nice man trolling the line, telling people they need to get their tickets elsewhere, before getting in that line.  We took our printed email to the head of the ticket-procurement line.  The ticket people kept the printout confirming our online purchase, and gave us tickets.

We had purchased a Uffizi/Accademia combination, which seemed to be the most cost-effective solution (as we wanted to see David, anyway).

It is seriously worth finding out what to do to avoid lines!  There is often a trick, like buying your tix on line before you leave home, which will allow you to evade what can be seriously long lines.  Rick Steves can be very helpful with suggestions about what to do to avoid lines.

One of the things Rick mentions for the Uffizi is that it's good to look into several online places to buy tickets.  All are cost notably more than waiting in that long line and buying your tix in person, but some are truly extortionate, and not all have a good reputation for actually letting you have the tickets you believe you have purchased.....

My daughter did our research on this, and found a place that wasn't TOO expensive, that seemed to have a good reputation.  (Aren't we lucky, to have all of this at our fingertips on the web!)

The next post will take us inside the Uffizi................



In order to facilitate chronological traversal of these posts, here is a link to the next post.

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