Thursday, June 24, 2004
Now museum, now you don't
This day was full of museums. Our first stop was the Brancacci Chapel, which contains frescoes that scholars say are the first artworks of the Renaissance. Seeing them was a pleasurable experience. The church wisely restricts access to about ten people per fifteen minutes, and we arrived early enough so that we did not have to wait very long to get in. Once we entered the chapel, I took my time to look closely at the frescoes (I had studied them in college), and even after the allotted time expired, the guard on duty let me stay as long as I wanted.
Brancacci Chapel frescoes
The rest of the museums we visited, unfortunately, were a fight against crowds. We circumvented them to some degree — for instance, we called the Uffizi gallery's ticket office the day before to reserve a timed entrance, and consequently we had to wait only ten minutes in line, as opposed to hours. But once inside the galleries, it was the rare room that did not have a long line to enter, or a huge crowd to squeeze through to get close to the artworks, or deafening noise. In one exhibit, I was in a room with three American college-aged kids who were standing in front of a 13th-century wooden door. I could see it coming — they put their clumsy hands on the fragile portal, oohing and aahing. A guard who saw this walked toward the offenders, and, in a tone reminiscent of an American giving an explanation to a hapless foreigner, waved them away. "These doors are very, very, very OLD. Please don't touch them!" Overall, the crowds, especially the younger tourists, were exasperating. (But man, were there some cuties!)
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| Ponte Vecchio | |
I came, I saw, I shopped
Ponte Santa Trinita
After the Brancacci Chapel, we crossed the river to the Uffizi. Its collection is highly focused on Florentine art from the Renaissance and the periods just before and after. The most famous works on display are a pair of Botticelli paintings, Birth of Venus and Primavera. The visit to the Uffizi was surprisingly manageable; we were able to see almost every room in roughly four hours. I must add that quite a few rooms were closed, which upset me because I had to pay 12.50 € ($15) admission.
Ponte Vecchio and Vasari Corridor of Uffizi
From there, we stopped at a café that happened to be on the route of a parade. June 24 is St. John's Feast day, an important holiday in Florence. The celebration includes a parade of local dignitaries, dressed in medieval costumes, a soccer match, and to top it off, a fireworks extravaganza.
St. John's Day Parade
In the evening, we bought a bottle of Chianti and a jar of olives, went back to our hostel and relaxed. (This hostel, compared to the one in Naples, was a Costco: ten times as many beds, a cafeteria, big screen TV and Internet access!) We capped the night by watching a thrilling Euro 2004 match between England and Portugal that featured two overtime goals and ended on penalty kicks.
