Score: Kevin-1.....Pickpocketer-0

Florence, Firenze, Florentine, no matter how you say the name it means the same thing, a beautiful city that was the birthplace of the Renaissance but still has the ability to capture the imagination. As planned, today was our day to tour Florence a little more in detail and experience what makes this place so magical. The morning was early, we had reservations for the Uffizi museum which meant we were able to skip the 4-hour wait to get in the door. Just a little background, the Uffizi museum was originally created in the 1581 to house the enormous collection of art owned by the ruling family of Florence, the Medici. Over time and even currently, art and sculptures are donated to the museum and the collection continues to grow. Once inside the tour begins with original marble busts of Roman nobles and socialites, from 1st and 2nd centuries AD, including Julius Caesar himself. The tour takes you through the periods of art collected in an almost chronological order, from pre-Renaissance items though more recently, the 18th century Flemish artists. So along the way we saw pieces of art from Donatello, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Raphael, Da Vinci, Giotto, Caravaggio, Rubens and a host of other artists that I could not pronounce nor remember at this time. Some of the pieces are relatively mainstream, famous so to speak, like the Birth of Venus or Raphael’s self portrait. Neither one of us are real art connoisseurs but it is hard not to appreciate what is present in this museum. I thought it was interesting that the vast majority of the pieces were commissioned and used to adorn the facades or interiors of churches but everyone is naked, just a little weird to me. One really cool thing about the courtyard are the marble statues that pay honor famous Florentines: Da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo, Dante and even Amerigo Vespucci (if you don’t know who he is, shame on you!) Anyways, after a couple of hours in there, we toured another church and grabbed lunch before breaking for a little bit to beat the heat and the gazillion people that are everywhere. The afternoon tour took us the Ponte Vecchio bridge to snap some cheesy photos over the Arno River like everyone else and then we made our way to the Duomo, the massive domed church that was the inspiration for the dome at St. Peter’s Basilica and our own capitol rotunda in D.C. Sooooo we had the genius idea to climb up to the top of the dome, all 463 steps, I was ready to puke after the first 100! Anyways, we made it to the top and we’re rewarded with an awesome view and a refreshing breeze. We stayed up there for a little bit, catching our breath and snapping photos and imaging what it would have been like to live here 500 years ago. The climb down wasn’t as bad, we made it back to the room, changed for dinner and had a meal that has topped anything we have had on this trip so far. As to the title, we stopped so I could give Linz a lesson on how to haggle with the sidewalk vendors, cheap bags and watches of course and as one dude showed us his inventory his partner swung around behind and tried to pick my pocket, he failed! Anyways, I’ll put the pictures up here shortly, tomorrow we are taking a short train to Pisa so I can drop kick this leaning tower I have always heard about and fix it. Ciao