Florence in One Day

Today was a VERY busy day. We started off in the morning with a private tour of the natural history museum. John has been working with a researcher there named Laura Beani, who arranged the tour. It's a really interesting museum, with all sorts of things collected through the years. Here are a few:

Late 16th-century table with white chalcedony top, inlays of jasper, cornelian, and lapis lazuli, and gold edges:



Terracotta fruit models, 17th century:



Tooth bracelet from James Cook's third voyage:



Next was the Stork Room, which contained old astronomical instruments, and a built in sundial that registers at midday:






From the roof of the tower, we saw some fabulous views of Florence:





Here's the stairway up to the roof:



They had tons of stuffed animals, like any old-fashioned natural history museum:



Some of the animals were arranged incorrectly, because the people working on them didn't know what they looked like in real life. Laura showed us a hippo that had been assembled with its feet sticking out in front like a bear!

One of the most interesting things we saw was room after room of wax anatomical models. The detail was amazing!



There were also the "Plague waxes": wax dioramas by Giulio Gaetano Zumba, a 17th-century Sicilian wax modeler.



Last but not least was a fabulous mineralogical exhibit. The first room was simply row after row of colorful crystal specimens. Frederico (one of the guys giving the tour) likened it to a coral reef.

After speeding through the last part of the museum, we decided to splurge on a taxi to the Galleria dell'Accademia. (My original plan for the day had us starting at the Accademia, near our hotel, and walking south to the Uffizi. Since we started the day at the Natural History Museum, south of the Uffizi, we added a LOT of walking to the plan.) We had hot dogs while waiting in line to get in. We did have reservations, so we got to wait in the shorter line. Naturally, the line didn't move the whole time while John was getting the hot dogs, but as soon as we got them and started eating, it moved quickly, and we had to gulp them at the front of the line before we could go in.)

Michelangelo's David was amazing, and they also had a exhibit on musical instruments. There is so much art that after a while, our eyes glazed over (Matt started complaining that everything looked alike).

Next stop was the hotel, where we picked up swimsuits and changed for the evening. (I've been wearing a light skirt during the day, because of the heat, but changing into jeans for dinner to keep the mosquitos off my legs.)

We went back to the same gelateria we visited yesterday. Beth and I were both disappointed that they didn't have any mango gelato today.



At the Uffizi, we had to take our reservations to a special ticket office, then go back to the "with reservations" line. Not only did they have a bag screen and metal detector (just like the Accademia), but they also made us empty out our water bottles.

The Uffizi was overwhelming. In the hallway, statues line the walls. When you look up, there are large paintings on the walls. Above that are smaller paintings lining the top of the wall. And the ceiling itself was ornately decorated. And that's just the corridor! Inside the rooms, there are paintings and more paintings, and equally elaborate ceilings.

We somehow missed the doorway to the Botticelli rooms, which we realized after we reached the cafeteria at the opposite end of the U, so we had to backtrack almost all the way around the building. Then, of course, we had to go forward again to reach the exit.

Matt's favorite piece of art from today was Michelangelo's David. I liked Titian's Venus of Urbino (I almost bought a poster, but decided I didn't want to lug it around Italy and France). John's was Bronzino's Eleonora di Toledo with her son Giovanni, and Beth liked Botticelli's Primavera.

After leaving the Uffizi, we walked back to the natural history museum, where Laura met us and drove to her country house for dinner. We drove under a portion of the medieval wall of Florence,



saw some of the Tuscan countryside,



admired her house (formerly the farmer's house on an estate),



enjoyed the view from her house,



swam in her pool,



and had a fabulous dinner with her family. She billed it as a "simple" dinner, but we thought it was wonderful! Green salad; a salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, and red onions; a local pasta (stracci toscani) with pesto; grilled pork and chicken; fresh fruit (including a local flat peach that was really good); and ice cream.