We had breakfast in the hotel. Breakfasts in Europe are probably the cause of the first twinges of homesickness. All of Europe seems to live on some form of white bread – white bread, pasta, pastries, etc. Our most common breakfast until we got here was a variation of the petit dejeuner, a pastry (usually a croissant), a glass of orange juice (almost always fresh squeezed) and a tiny cup of coffee. Here in the hotel, the buffet offers some dishes more to American tastes: a strangely colored scrambled egg like substance, slightly warmed bacon and a slightly coffee flavored weak tea. However, they also had yogurt, which has been hard to find over here.
After breakfast we did our laundry at a place between the hotel and the train station. During the wash cycle, we went to the station to buy Firenze cards (a pass at saves money and gets you into most of the city’s attractions without waiting in line), get first class tickets so we could avoid the hassle of our trip here and to buy tickets for our day trip to Sienna. It was rush hour and the ticket area was mobbed. We did get the Sienna tickets from a machine and learned that passes were available at the tourist information office across the street. As for the ticket upgrades, we decided to try again when we returned from Sienna.
Once our laundry was done and packed away, we headed out across town to the Galileo Science Museum, a small museum on the river next to the giant Uffizi. This museum is loaded with all things mechanical from the scientific reawakening of the Renaissance to the earliest electricity generating devices to the earliest electric motors. We spent a couple of hours there enthralled – so much that that night I spent wakeful hours figuring out valve activating hardware for a two sided steam piston and a way to capture and condense the exhaust steam.
After a break for coffee and a pastry, we walked down to and along the river for a while. The pause and some walking braced us up for what lay ahead.
We got in line for the Uffizi Museum with others who had reservations or Firenze Cards. The beautiful building was built in the 1700s to house the great art, artifacts and scientific instruments of Florence. It is home the finest collection of Italian Renaissance art in the world. Connie and I love art museums. However, Italian Renaissance is our least favorite kind of art. Oh well. Still we looked at hundreds of depictions of the Madonna with Child accompanied by various visitors, of the crucifixion and so on, all attended by saints, angles and cherubs. We observed the progress from two-dimensional stick figures portrayed with inferior paints, through the Italians learning about perspective and eventually being able to paint women and children with some degree of accuracy and with decent paints. Meanwhile, the Dutch Masters had been doing exceptional representational painting for centuries. But one thing I don’t get: central and southern Europeans are almost all darker skinned with dark hair and eyes. Why would Mary and Jesus be depicted as having blond hair and blue eyes?
Still, we walked all 93 rooms. The building itself is nice with long, window lit halls on its courtyard sides and ends. These galleries held mostly statues and portraits of popes and famous Florentine citizens.
Afterward, we walked to where Peter had stayed for a month in 2002 while studying abroad. We’d visited him for an afternoon then while on a cruise. We also scoped out the Baldovino Restaurant nearby. Peter said we’d have to eat there.