The one with all the art (Florence)

This may come as a surprise to you, but seeing art for the sake of seeing art. I like to go to famous places and see famous things, like the Louvre, but I get tired. It is enough for me that someone tells me that the painting, sculpture, drawing is awesome and revolutionary etc. I need to be able to see it or else I feel like it might as well be art of any old person. Certain exceptions to this exist; we will call them my favorite artists, like Dali, Gaudily, Monet. Anyways, now that you know that, you can better understand our time in Italy.

On day 2 of Florence, I decided that we would go to one art gallery/museum for the experience. I selected the Uffizi Gallery for its size and popularity. Unfortunately, because we didn't have access to a printer, I wasn't able to book us tickets in advance. This meant that we spent the entire morning or more than 2 hours waiting in line. This is what I will remember most about the Gallery. And since we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, All i can say is that there were a few works by the Italian greats, Michelangelo, Raphael, da Vinci, and they were relatively impressive. I think that I would enjoy it more if I was actually familiar with the artists and art I saw.

Next we headed to the San Lorenzo market to look around and to Market Centrale to find something to eat. The market had tons of stalls selling leather goods, which was pretty neat. Katie bought a belt, which was an experience. At first we thought it was too big, but then the vendor took off the buckle and cut it down to the right size, just like that. For lunch we had more panini, and I'll admit that Katie's sausage and veggie panino was much better than my spicy salami, which was cold. After picking up some postcards, we were ready for a break.

 Post-break, we headed to Piazza de Santa Croce to check out the leather goods and see the Basilica. I was a fan of the statue next to it. Katie wanted to go back to Ponte Vecchio to take a closer look at the jewelry, so we trudged back over there. Some of it, was really pretty, but Katie liked her new ring better! Finally we walked along the river, enjoying the sunset and our aching feet. We had had our eyes on some fantastic looking pastries near our hotel, so we picked up some more cheap, hot panini to fill our bellies first. Side note: singular sandwich in Italian= panino and plural= panini because that is how they form the plural, with an "I". The pastries were to die for and were probably the best thing I ate on the whole trip. I finally understand the many people with a love affair for tiramisu! It was an excellent end to the day!!