Lunch in Florence

Time to eat and we were ready for it after so much walking around the streets of Florence and five hours or so since Room Service breakfast on the ship.

I liked the burst of color from the sunflowers at the doorstep

And the Statue of David in the fish tank raised a smile

The bathroom is in the distance and some of our group were happy to see it

The main dining room which easily accommodated our group of 40 people

We were served by a trio of young servers who brought out our first welcome dish-vegetable lasagne

They also brought out a few bottles of this and it went down smoothly!

Braised beef in a tomato sauce with spinach and roasted potatoes-fuel for the rest of the afternoon

and Tiramisu

It wasn't fine dining of course but good simple, hearty Italian food in a restaurant that few tourists are likely to stumble upon.  The meal was included in our excursion. The service team was very efficient and had us on our way again in an hour.

Before our group left I excused myself to go outside to have a cigarette and noticed another restaurant across the street with an unusual name- the Cat and the Fox.  They were closed and probably only opened for dinner. Our dinner would be many miles away on the ship docked in Livorno.

Now we had to make the walk back to Piazza della Signoria where we had tickets to visit the Uffizi Gallery. We retraced our steps, somewhat more slowly as we were now carrying our lunches in our happy stomachs.

When we arrived at the Uffizi which was under renovation and surrounded by scaffolding , there were lines of people waiting to enter. Our guide found out that tour groups were being limited to 24 persons and she had more than that. She called a colleague on her cell phone and 15 minutes later she arrived to assist. We would be in her smaller group. Then our new found that her radio mic wasn't working so we would have to stay close to her if we wanted to hear what she was saying. Not a huge problem.

As we were a tour group with tickets we were able to bypass the lines and go straight into the Uffizi.

 Alas it was already crowded inside. As you walk along the corridors moving from one room to the next don't forget to look UP and admire the art above you....this also avoids getting the heads of all the other tourists in front of you into your shot.

We started off in chronological order with Byzantine art which leaves me somewhat cold but it was the art of its time, heavy on religious symbolism

When I saw an open window I made my way to it to get some fresh air as it was rather stuffy inside.
When I looked out I got a nice view of Ponte Vecchio

Back to the art on the walls and here is the only Michelangelo painting I saw. Realism in the figure drawing was refreshing after the flat stylized Byzantine techniques

In each room of course there was much to see-if you could see it as there were so many people in the way. The Uffizi gets 2 million visitors a year and it seemed half of them were here that afternoon.
Taking pictures wasn't easy with so many heads in the way and naturally some people wanted to stand gazing at the paintings. My goal was to take photos quickly as I always do and then move out of the way and onto the next. It would be a good opportunity if you were a pickpocket working the crowd. I tried to stay as close to our group as possible to listen to our guide.

I was particularly looking forward to the Botticelli room but when we got there it was under renovation

A very artistic cover-up! However some of his work had been moved to the next room

The Birth of Venus

Oh! Here she is again!

I can't identify what follows but Wikipedia has a good article on the Uffizi that shows many of these paintings with notes

I know that these are from a Dutch Master, famous for their techniques with lighting

After an hour of trying to take photos in the crowded galleries I was ready to leave early so I told our guide I would see the group outside when they were done and made my way to the exit, stopping on the way to look at a huge model of Florence laid out before me on a vast table

Somewhere on that model might be our tour bus waiting to take us away!

In case you were wondering the bathrooms are down in the basement reached by stairs not from the Byzantine period

I sat outside for 15 minutes or so until the tour groups came out and assembled for the walk back to the bus. This walk would be known later as the Death March as the bus was about a mile away and some of our group were using canes to help them walk. I took pictures along our route

Once free of the narrow streets we came to the Arno river and the bus was roughly where that bridge is in the distance, although didn't know that at the time and thought we would just walk until we fell over and went to sleep

Hooray! We are getting closer!

I took some photos of the other side of the river, a side I may never set foot on unless I spend more than a day in Florence (which I hope to do at some point)

Eventually, tired and sweaty, we came upon our waiting bus and were glad to finally sit down

We relaxed, thinking we would be driving directly back to the ship....but were we?