Recap of the rest of the Weekend and playing catch-up.

So after getting back from Siena and being totally exhausted from walking all over the place, what do I do on Saturday and Sunday? Walk around a couple of the museums and gardens here in Florence, of course. Because theoretically I want to make the most of my time here, and for me this involves seeing as many museums as possible.

Saturday, I walked through the Palazzo Vecchio and Bargello Museum, then Sunday at the Uffizi No photos allowed inside, unfortunately, but take my word that the stuff inside is incredible. Especially as someone who has taken enough art history classes to recognize a lot of the stuff, seeing it in person is so much more impressive, especially once you see the actual dimensions of a piece. Sandro Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" almosst takes up an entire wall, I was a bit shocked to find out.

But walking through the museums is a kind of torture, since most of the places were built before air conditioning, guess what? There usually isn't any, or else is used so faintly you can't even tell if it's on. Not to mention all of the stairs to climb up and down, and you're not allowed to take water inside with you either. Before coming here I read about Standahl syndrome, which is supposed to be an affliction from coming to Florence where an individual is leterally overcome by the art and gets dizzy or faints. I think it has a lot mre to do with the heat and the stair climbing and all, but that's just my opinion.

Sunday, after a bit of a rest from the Uffizi I went over to the Boboli Gardens, which were a change of pace from the museums, not as busy, big open spaces, and trees! It offers a more sedate lace to visit and some extrodianry views of both the city of Florence and the Tuscan hillside behind it. However, walking through it, it was so hot, and dusty, and did I mention hot? I don't know how the Florentines of the Renaissance managed to walk everywhere wearing wool and furs and tights, because I start sweating after 2 minutes of walking wearing just a t-shirt and shorts. But then again, I suppose if I had just sat in one shady spot for a while, instead of trying to cover the entire gardens in a few hours I would have been in better shape. Because of the heat, most of the grass was baked dry, but smaller gardens had been watered better. The gardens also had a lot of cats in it, for some reason; these were also the first cats I'd seen in Italy and I'm sorry to say, most of them weren't very friendly.

This week for classes I got to visit Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce, two of THE churches to visit in Florence. Played a bit more of Art History notables, and there were a lot in Santa Maria Novella, but Santa Croce did have the tombs of Galileo Galilei, Michaelangelo, and Machiavelli. And a really tasteless monument to Dante Aligheri, even though he isn't even buried there.

For painting we went to Cascine park, and had to take a bus to get there. An important note about the Italian buses, people are just as lax about whether or not you'e paid the bus fare as they are about driving. Apparently, once in a while they go around and check, but I've got two unpunched tickets, and I"m not using them unless I have to. Cascine park was in much the same shape as the Boboli Gardens, that is, baked to a fine golden-brown, but it did have a nice view of the Arno river, a fountain filled with geese and turtles; and odder still, a monument to George Washington. There's probably an interesting story behind that.



More pictures up this weekend, they take a while to post, especially if I want to have them in a certain order.