Lovely day today in Florence. We had a 10:45 reservation at the Uffizi Gallery this morning and spent a few fun hours there: Michelangelo's Doni Tondo, Botticelli's Birth of Venus (interestingly, a misnomer since it actually portrays her landing at Cypres) and Primavera, da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi and Annunciation.... Wonderful things. Like walking around in an absorbing art textbook for three hours, but probably more fun.
We had a bit of an altercation with the audioguide-seller woman at the entrance because the denied us the rental of an audioguide. We NEEDED the audioguide - we are huge audioguide people. But apparently at the Uffizi you must have either a drivers license or passport to rent the veverable audioguide. A credit card with your photo on it is "not possible." We begged. We pleaded. We offered other valuables in the passport's stead. (We didn't have our passports on us, erroneously believing we would have no need of them since we were only going to the Uffizi and not to another country. Apparently the prestigious Uffizi holds its audioguide renters to the same gold standard as international border control). If the purpose of this deposit item is to ensure that you will return the audioguide machine and not run away with it, we realized afterwards that we should have offered to leave our shoes with the woman. Obviously we couldn't leave the museum without shoes. We ended up buying a guidebook instead.
We also visited the Basilico San Lorenzo in the afternoon. Tonight was our one dinner out of the week and we thoroughly enjoyed it at La Giostra (thank you Aunt Linda and Uncle Bob for the recommendation!!) It was beautiful and the food was delicious and we got free champagne and a free bottle of limoncello as a "digestive." We spent over three hours there and had such a great night. Though we're quite sure it was also our most expensive dinner out ever - but well worth it!
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