Italy Day 6: Florence

We woke up early in anticipation of our appointment to go to the Uffizi gallery. Our hotel breakfast had a lot of good options: breads, croissants (called "brioche" here), some filled with chocolate or cream, marble cake, yogurt, boiled eggs, and a lot more. We filled up and headed out.

The Ponte Vecchio is nice by day, too.

We retrieved our tickets for the Uffizi Gallery (and our tickets for the Accademia the next day, while we were at it). We decided to listen to the Rick Steves audio tour and this turned out to be a good idea: it definitely helped me to appreciate the art more when ordinarily I would have just nodded and breezed through the gallery. I had to stoop over a bit and bend my knees to avoid getting the usual lower back pains that I get at museums, which probably looked a bit funny. The Uffizi Gallery contains many famous works of art, foremost of those being Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera. Seeing all of these works up close was quite the experience.

Bottiselfie!

He looks happy

After emerging from the gallery, we sought out lunch. We found a place that sold doners, so we had them again. Doners are slightly different in Italy than they are in Berlin: they are primarily made from chicken here, use a different kind of bread, and sometimes have fries put into them as well as the usual fillings (maybe they do that now in Berlin).

We took a break in our hotel room and then headed out again. This time our destination was another church: the Abbazia di San Miniato al Monte. This was recommended by our friend and former neighbor Rey, who said it had a great view. We could have taken the bus, but decided to hike up to this church. Before we reached the church, we stopped at a terrace to take in the view. The view was worth it, and I'm guessing this site is commonly used to photograph Florence (much in the same way that Kerry Park is often used to photograph Seattle). We asked somebody to take our picture (and then asked somebody else when we realized her photography skills were lacking - once she was out of earshot).

The best view of Florence is not from the Duomo, because it does not include the Duomo in it. It's this view.

We weren't too impressed with the church at first, but that was before we realized we had accidentally walked into the Chiesa di San Salvatore al Monte, which was a different church. Once we found the right place, we stopped in to the store and bought some goods, including biscotti and gelato made by the monks here (both were quite good - I got pear gelato, Liz got eggnog). This church was a bit more impressive on the interior.

Biscotti selfie!

We decided on a restaurant for dinner, and descended the hill to get to it. To our dismay, we discovered it didn't open until 7:00 PM. Why do Italian restaurants open so late? They're like the anti-Danes! So instead, we looked for a pizzeria, and found one near the Uffizi Gallery. This was our first proper pizza - before this all the pizza we had was sitting behind a plastic bin rather than made to order. I got one with salami on it, Liz got mixed vegetables (she gave me the olives). Neither of our pizzas had sauce. They were on regular thin pizza dough, not foccacia.

Liz's mouth was too full of pizza to smile

After dinner we searched for more gelato, but the place we were seeking out was closed, and decided we didn't need more gelato from what we already had.

Observations:

• Just about every hotel room in Italy has lights you can turn on and off from your bed as well as by the door. This is brilliantly convenient, and doesn't require a smart device or wifi (it does require a 3-way light switch, though).

Odd statue placement