Mornings are never the most pleasant time of the day for me.
Unfortunately, mornings for me means that I can’t continue sleeping in, and that I’m generally late to something. Today, it was being late to the Cathedral de Santa Maria Novella. Inside, compared to the others, it wasn’t that impressive. There were no frescos, but that made it easier to process everything else in the cathedral. Downstairs, there’s a museum which detailed the history of the cathedral and how it was built.
Next, we went to the Uffizi Galleries. The plaza in which the gallery was situated had lots of statues, which was how we located it in the midst of the busy area in the first place. Annoyingly, however, is that our online ticket that I personally purchased a couple days ago didn’t have a tour guide associated with it. Even though the official website’s link said that they did have a tour guide associated with it, they didn’t, and we had to basically pay double for a tour guide. Was it worth it? Yes, because otherwise, we wouldn’t have understood anything. For me, it’s just been more difficult to obtain meaning out of artwork. Whether it’s because it requires a different sort of thinking skill than academics does or not, I get lazy and just skim paintings often, a bad habit for one that enjoys drawing so much. Anyways, the tour guide introduced the reason why the Uffizi is named the way it is because it’s Italian for “offices”, as one of the Medici (former governing family of Florence) used it as an office for law? More like an office of art, if you ask me.
Inside the gallery, there were all sorts of sculptures and paintings; most notable of which was Botecelli’s Birth of Venus and some of Michaelangelo’s works. Da Vinci was also in there. I would recommend it, whether you were an art lover or not, as long as you have a tour guide for the latter. We also fed more pigeons because there were pigeons and those make good pictures.
Funny Story: we left to see the roof of the Cathedral, 30 minutes prior to when we were assigned to get there. According to Google Maps, that trip should be about 16 minutes. We got there 5 minutes late.
So I accidentally set us going to the //Basilica// de Santa Maria, not the Cathedral de Santa Maria, which backtracked us. After some arguments and Dad getting lost, my mom, sister, and I decided that my sister and I should go up first, while she waited for Dad.
They ended up getting to the tower at 6:55, 5 minutes before they closed. Oops!
There really was an amazing view though.
Speaking of amazing views, we also ate ice cream by the sunset. Feelin' jelly? But we didn't eat jelly, we ate ice cream !
And also locked Dad out at 9pm. Oops!