Amsterdam & Italy 2011: Day 7 - Florence Birth of Venus...check! 21Apr2011

Birth of Venus - check!

Lunch at Trattoria Mario - check!

City bus to view Florence from Fiesole at sunset - check!

We began the day at the Uffizi Gallery and ended the night atop Fiesole with a panoramic view of Florence. Throw in a visit to the central marketplace to see fresh food, including the tripe stands, and lunched at the Schwartz’s of Florence - Trattoria Mario. The Uffizi is really incredible and it is possible spending days in there if you want to analyze everything in-depth. Their shop sells guidebooks with increasing detail, size, and price but after a couple of hours you sort of get the idea. It is interesting seeing the development of painting through the Renaissance from very flat and all religion-related to experimenting in depth, colours and themes. Our son Daniel sums up the day, including the Uffizi, as follows:

“Today I got up from an almost sleepless night, ate breakfast at the hotel for the first time. It was mostly desserts and there was some lady who had to serve us food even though it was set up buffet style. We then left for the Uffizi art gallery. The paintings were either portraits, angels, Venus, Jesus, Baby Jesus, Jesus’s mother, Jesus being born, Jesus on a throne, Jesus’ first steps, head of Jesus, portrait of Jesus, eye lash of Jesus, dead Jesus, bloody Jesus, Jesus on a cross, Jesus coming back to life after death, etc. We also saw some original statues. I think the remakes outside are better.”

“After the gallery, we walked to the hotel and napped and read. We then left for Fiesole - it is a place high up and you can get a good view of Florence. We then went back to the hotel for dinner and bed.”

I guess that pretty well sums things up and I couldn’t have said it better myself! The only thing to add was that we lined up for an hour to get into Mario’s and it was worth the experience. Just like we would advise visitors to Montreal that it is worth the wait to take in Schwartz’s, the same can be said about Marios. A few pasta dishes, a 1 kg steak served rare, and a green salad, washed down with aqua minerale frissante.

Tomorrow…an appointment with the real David at the Academia gallery then off to Cinque Terre!