Today we went to the Uffizi Gallery - Florence's largest art museum. I had pre ordered tickets and reservations were at 9am. We were so glad that we bought the tickets ahead of time because already the line at 8:45 was really long and we were able to skip completely past it and got right in. The Uffizi is really big and has been Florence's art museum since the 18th century. We saw many painitngs from Botticelli such as the Birth of Venus, Raphael's self portrait (the same pose that can be found in his School of Athens painting) and his Madonna and Child, many of Da Vinci's unfinished works becasue (as we learned today) he was a bit of a flake when someone would pay him to do a painting. If a better offer came along then he would just bail on his current project. Sean really liked the work from the Northerm Renaissance because of their use of chiaroscurro (shadows and highlights). There was a lot of Roman art, Italian Renaissance (both Early and High), Northern Renaissance, French Roccoco, and Spanish Baroque paintings.

We were in the Uffizi until about three. After we walked across the Ponte Vecchio bridge which was just as crowded and packed as the Bridge of Sighs is in Venice with all the same shops. On our way back to our hotel, we had some more gelato and then we both took a much needed nap. I think were really getting the hang of this "siesta" lol.

That evening we got ourselves together, found somewhere to have dinner. We tried chicken liver pate on a crostini! It tasted like thick beef stew spread onto toast. It didnt taste bad, but it wasnt super tsty either. After dinner we walked through Florence and back over to the Ponte Vecchio bridge where a musician was playing on the peak of the bridge. Really good music too. People were just hanging out, listening to him. There was a woman in the distance with her easel up painting the whole scene. My thought was, "Wow! People acutally do that! I want to do that!" But I think I would need to have longer then just 4 days to complete something like that. It was a nice and relaxing night.

When we got back to our hotel we started working on laundry. Or I should say that Sean is working on laundry while I type this blog. ;) Its been interesting trying to figure out how and where we are going to hang all of our clothes. Well I should probably help Sean so that way we can get to bed that much sooner. Tomorrow we are off the Tuscany for our wine and olive tasting tour! Unitl then!