Italy trip part 9 イタリア旅行 パート９

June 29th (Sun) Florence (2nd day)

7:20 am wake up, breakfast at our hotel.
8:40 am Globus walking tour of Florence: Academia of arts, Duomo, Piazza Della Signoria (city hall) and Piazza Croce.
2:45 pm Uffizi museum (14 euro x 2 +8 audio)
7:00 pm dinner at la Spada
laundry time

フィレンチェ2日目です。初日はとんでもない日を過ごしましたが、２日目はなかなか充実し一日でした。まず半日ツアーに参加して、ミケランジェロのダビデ像を見るためにアカデミア美術館へ行きます。想像していたよりも大きなダビデ像でした。ミケランジェロがこれを作ったんだなーとなんだか感慨にふけってしまいまいた。（前回来た時はレプリカしか見ていなかったので、今回はちゃんとオリジナルが見れました！）

その後はお約束のドゥオモに行きました。今日は中には入りません。（でも明日自分たちで行きます！）　１７０年もかかったプロジェクトだそうな…。ホントに大きな教会です。

夕方にはウッフィッチ美術館に行って、またたくさんのアートを見てきました。ここは以前来た事があるのですが、今回はもっと長い間じっくりと名画の数々を見てきました。ボッティチェリのビーナスの誕生とか春とかが有名です。ダビンチの受胎告知もちゃんと見ました。

ディナーで食べたポルチーニのブルシェッタ（英語ではブルシェッタと言います。ブルスケッタじゃないのね…。カタカナって難しい）がとてもとても美味しかった。ポルチーニいっぱい買って来たので家でも作ってみたいと思います♪

Today, we joined with the Globus tour again. They will show us the highlights of Florence. Florence is a smaller city so you can walk around the town in 1 day or so. First, we went to Academia of Arts. The main event is to see the statue of David by Michelangelo. It was a huge statue for sure...I could not take pictures inside, so here is a pix of the statue that I borrowed from the other site.

There were other statutes that Michelangelo did not finish at the museum. It was neat to see some progress in the statues. If you are interested, you can type "Four Prisoners" by Michelangelo.

Then of course we went to Duomo after that. It was a huge church and we did not go inside today but we will later... :) The first stone was laid in 1296 for this Cathedral, and this project lasted for 170 years! It sure was a huge building and we learned that we can walk to all the way top. Sounds pretty impressive!



John in front of the gates of paradise!

Then we went to a city hall and piazza Della Signoria to see some original statutes. David's statue at museum used to be located here... today there is a replica.

A nice city hall building...


Original Location for the Statue of David

Lunch at Gusto Leo. Since John had good clam spaghetti last night (I was sick so I could not eat...remember?) I ordered the same dish (different restaurant) and John got Tortellini.

This one for me...

And this one for John. :)

Then we came back to take a nap. Well, before that John had to have some gelato!


After napping time, we went to Uffizi museum to see some fine arts. If you want to go Uffizi in Italy, you need to make a reservation. We could buy an excursion with Globus but they charged like 33 euro per person. It means $100 for both of us. We made our reservation and got a self-guided mp3 player thing and paid $57 on our own. So not bad. Just a little tip if you want to go there. :)
Again, I could not take pictures of the art work in the museum, so here are some of the famous paintings that we saw at Uffizi. (borrowed from the world wide web.)

The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli

Allegory of Spring by Botticelli

Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci


Then we went to eat dinner at La Spada. Ordered three different kinds of spaghetti and porcini bruschetta! Porcini was so good. (and yes, I bought lots of dried procini to bring them home.)


In front of Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge in Italian)

We went back to hotel and John decided to go to do laundry. He knew I was exhausted so he went alone. (maybe it was because most of the dirty clothes were his, not mine... I was doing my own laundry in bathroom) Anyways, he said it won't take long and he should be back way before 10:00 pm. Then 10:00 pm came...he did not come back. 10:15...I started to worry and about 10:40 pm he came back in one piece. He told me that he met a cool couple from Canada (and a weird family) and had some beer while they were doing laundry. It costed him $16 to wash and dry (pretty expensive, huh?) ...but sounded like he had a good time.

I was watching TV and witnessed Spain won the Euro 2008 in Italy. (soccer game...pretty big deal.)

Again, we had a great day in Florence.