Shay's Blog

Buona Sera!

As per Tom’s email, we have arrived in Florence, Italy. Yesterday was pretty quiet. We got lost in the city and found some beautiful Renaissance treasures-statue gardens, hotels, a replica of the David ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo’s_David), hotels, little shops built on the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Vecchio ), hotels, the Duomo (http://www.mega.it/eng/egui/monu/buq.htm), and hotels. By the way, this place is overcrowded with American, female tourists and hotels.

Today, we went to the Uffizi Gallery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uffizi). Uffizi, when translated, means offices. I don’t know why there’s an art gallery dedicated to offices but we went anyway. Kidding. It was nice. They boast about being the greatest museum in all of Europe. I absolutely, with contest, disagree. The Louvre and the d’Orsay in Paris, even the Victoria and Albert in London host much more interesting art. We decided that since it was supposed to be so elaborate that we would invest in the audio guides. It was a big waste of Euros. You would enter a room, let’s say the Michelangelo Room, that has about 15 paintings on the wall and two in the center. You hit the button for the number of the room. “Welcome to the room named for Michelangelo.Directly in front of you is a piece that Michelangelo crafted for (insert famous name here) in some time long ago, still in it’s original frame. Please move on to the next room.” What?!!!!!!!!!!! We’ve never really experienced audio guides before but we are surely turned off to them now.

I will say that the art we did experience was immaculate. Though they boast of the Medici’s sizable collection, they’re collection of the four great Renaissance painters and sculptors were lacking to say the least. It was a complete misrepresentation on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-Michelangelo had about half a room to himself, Leonardo had about 3-maybe 5- paintings total, I only saw one Rafael, and Donatello wasn’t even there. Blasphemy.

But all in all it was a god day. Lots of walking. Good food. And us together in Florence. We’re going to try to see Sienna tomorrow. Hopefully we find the station and get tickets ok. We’ll write again soon.

Ciao Bambini

Sharon