Uffizi and Vasari Passage

Wednesday, January 8, 2014
My cold got worse, so today, I stay indoors and warm.  I'll go to the pharmacy to pick up some cough syrup or pills or something.  I asked Gabriele to teach me how to say:  I have a very bad cough.  Are you ready?  Ho tosse molto forte.  (Tengo tos muy fuerte)... thank you God for the Spanish language!
Drink lots of fluid, mostly chamomile tea, nice and hot, and watch tennis matches, or CNN.

Well, I was going to write yesterday, but the tour ended almost at 7:30 pm and by the time I got back, it was the social hour and I just HAVE to be sociable!  Besides, the two computers were being used.
So, let me tell you about this experience.
First of all, the neat thing about the Uffizi galleries (uffizi means offices, and it was thought that at some point this area was "prostitution alley", but the Duke called them "offices" to hide that fact),
MEN!  Well, if the story is not true, it certainly fit the times.....   What's neat about the Uffizi Galleries is that the art is displayed in chronological order.  You start by looking at religious art from the 1200-1300 and then the Renaissance period art, around 1400-1500 maybe more.  We saw pieces from Lippi, Caravaggio, Michaelangelo and many many others.   My favorite one is Botticelli's Venus, I don't know if you know it, but she's in the nude (strategically covered) standing on a shell.   Everything is so allegorical and unless someone is telling you what the painting means, you can't fully appreciate its beauty.  There are actually two Venus by Botticelli and both are equally impressive, not just the painting but their meaning.  Every drop or every stroke has some kind of meaning.  Okay, then when we finish with the Uffizi Galleries, we are taken to a big, big side door and this lady opens it with a secret code.  We go down a bunch of steps and we start walking the corridor.  By the way, the whole corridor is one kilometer long and it starts off by displaying lots and lots of self-portraits of famous painters and important people of the time.  One that I found particularly interesting was that of a woman, a painter, by the last name of Carriere.   It'd beautiful, soft, and she painted herself painting herself... I'm not just repeating myself.  The guide told us she was looking at herself in a mirror while she was painting and that's what she painted!   If she could have just waited for digital cameras!  I had NEVER of a female Florentine painter, until now.   There was actually two of them in the exhibit.
Okay, we're in the corridor looking at all the self-portraits and the self-portraits begin to be of a more modern style, even present-day artists like Kandisky,and  many others.   These self-portraits is just a sampling of the 1780 self-portraits that the Uffizi galleries has.  Okay, we keep waking and the guide tells us to stop at this window and take a look!  OMG!  The corridor even crossed the Church of Santa Felicita, and it had a balcony overlooking the gorgeous altar, and they could attend Mass without even being seen.   The corridor is really, really cold and it's pretty high above the street level.  The windows are small, because you couldn't see inside, but they could see YOU!   Apparently there was a lot of that going on, a sort of "peeping Tom" idea.  My, those people were something else.  They kept buying papacies, and one of them became pope, but first he had a baby with a woman!   MEN!  Okay, after the church, we kept walking and then we came to a pretty abrupt halt.  It seemed like it was the end of the corridor.  What happened here is that there was another palace there at that time, and the owners of the palace didn't want to sell the palace to the Medicis, just plain refused.  Of course, the tower of the palace was blocking the way for the corridor to go through.  So, the Medicis, without losing a beat, made a smaller crossway AROUND that same tower, sort of like a balcony, but covered, of course.
Clever, clever, clever.... I just want to know where the homeowners' association went wrong?  We ended up exiting through a small side door and onto the Boboli Gardens, which are HUGE and they are Pitti Palace's gardens.  By the way, there is NO picture taking throughout all this.    So, you will just have to use your imagination!

Tomorrow, Thursday, I go for a manicure/pedicure in the morning and then I'm meeting some of the other guests, 2 from Australia, to show them the restaurant that is, so far, my favorite in Firenze.  There are thousands of them, but I know how to get to this one, which is in a pretty hidden alley by the Santa Croce church.   I made sure I knew how to find it because I knew I would be going back there whenever I was nearby.   The tricky situation is that MANY of these fantastic restaurants, or trattorias, are called here.  Let me tell you something interesting:  in Italy there are different "levels" of restaurants.  BAR is just for a quick snack, panini, espresso.   OSTERIA is the next level up where  is still pretty "fast" food, but you can sit down at a table inside and/or outside.   Then comes the TRATTORIA, which is your typical restaurant with service and all that.  Finally, the RISTORANTE,
mostly upscale places, and restaurants that are housed in big hotels, and, typically, very expensive.
So, now you know.   Of course there are many, many PASTICCERIAS , which sell mostly pastries and coffee.  By the way, all of these have any kind of liquor, wine, or beer that you may desire, at ANY time of the day!  Ya ves, amiga Carmen, hasta en los restaurantes hay "niveles".
Okay, time to go to the pharmacy.   I need to calm down this @#$%& cough!   Ciao!