Diane, in and out of Italy: Jul 2, 2011

Today we got up relatively early (at 8:30) in order to be at the Uffizi Gallery for our 10am ticket time. It's nearby, so the walk was short. The museum itself, however, is a gargantuan maze of 15th and 16th century art. And you don't really realize what a maze it is until you have lugged yourself up three flights of stairs, waited until pretty much the last minute before heading to a restroom, and then found out that the only one is four flights down in the basement. (Well OK, there was one tiny one on the 2nd floor with a long line; I elected to go to the large one on the bottom floor). My map indicated restrooms on each floor, so first I checked out every inch of the third floor before asking and being directed to the bottom floor. And then I began following the toilet arrows. These directed you back and forth, in and out, of every installation the gallery had, before reluctantly leading you to stairs. Finally I got down to the ground floor, but still more arrows: through five segments of the gift shop, through the entrance, down another flight of stairs, over several meters of very uneven stone... to FINALLY the bathroom. I admit to muttering some pretty ungenerous things the whole circuitous way down to the basement.

This will give you a good gauge of my refinement level I suppose, but seeing at least a million paintings of the Madonna and baby Jesus are not really my idea of riveting entertainment. It doesn't seem as if artists were able to depict much emotion until the 16th century, making most of the 15th work look flat and homogeneous. It is true that there is much more to the Uffizi than that, but it's set up to have you see the earlier work before your tenacity is rewarded with Botticelli's The Birth of Venus.

Here are a few samples:

The comment made by someone viewing this: "That's pretty hard to do". Gasp.