Pleasant Living: MILWAUKEE-NYC-ITALY-GREECE AND A DAY IN LONDON BLOG POST SEVEN

FIRENZE

The one and only day trip we planned in advance was to Florence, my mother's namesake city. Unfortunately this year the city and my mother have taken a hit due to the hurricane with the same moniker that left so much devastation and death along the East coast of our own beloved country. Our personal tragedy with Florence which certainly doesn't compare to the devastation of the hurricane was a disappointing visit to the city named Florence that we'd hoped would be more welcoming and much less crowded. In our plan we had picked the middle of the week as the most likely day to see the least amount of tourists. We hadn't been to Firenze in a long time. The last time was when Emmy was about four, every time after that our vacations revolved around her school schedule. That meant summer travel and that meant we were going at the height of the tourist season.

With the advice and guidance of Stefania we drove to a tram stop with parking just outside the city proper and took a new light rail from there right into the city center. At 1.50 Euros per person it was the simplest part of our trip.

No matter how many tourists might be converging on their own personal mecca you can't avoid a stop at the Duomo. Getting elbowed or run over by a group of tourists trying to follow a guide with a pink umbrella or the Japanese flag on a stick hoisted in the air was not something we were keen to do. We felt it might be safer with less risk of being trampled if we went in September once the season had cooled down a bit. Nah, those pesky tourists were still out in force if perhaps a bit older and more dangerous. Now we had to watch out for walkers and those infernal walking sticks that look like a pair of ski poles.

I tried to solve my problem by shooting over their heads with limited success.

Still there's no denying that the architectural beauty of the building and use of pattern and repetition are dazzling if you can look high enough to see it.

It's also where you'll find the angels praying for everyone to go home and let Florence breathe for a while.

So on this trip back to the city on the Arne we found it was infinitely better to see the dome of the Duomo reflected in the window of the rooftop cafe at the Uffizi Gallery rather than at its foot in the midst of the hordes of tourists.

Visiting the Uffizi was our main reason for going to Florence. In all the times we've been to Tuscany we could never quite get it together to make ticket reservations for entrance into this acclaimed museum. Of course, you can buy "day of" tickets but that requires standing in two very long lines with very long waits. We're clearly too impatient for using the bulk of any vacation day to stand in a line. We won't even do that in New York where line standing is a sporting activity for many people and when you see that even the clergy need to stand in line for those tickets you know you did the right thing by buying in advance.

On our way to the Uffizi you pass through the Piazza della Signoria where you can find a bevy of Renaissance sculptures by some of the most famous sculpters of the time. A copy of Michelangelo's David is there making a ticket to the Galleria dell'Accademia where the original stands a moot point unless the copy is too Disneyland for you.

There are also works by Cellini, Bandinelli and Ammannati in the Piazza making for more things to look at for free and a whole bunch more tourists.

Once inside the Uffizi the first gallery we descended into housed a temporary exhibit by the artist, Fritz Koenig. I knew nothing of his work and none of us recognized his name. The first few rooms were deceptive and highly erotic, the kind of place that made you very uncomfortable walking through with your daughter. But the hardest room to walk into was very near the end. It showcased the bronze globe that once sat in the center of the fountain between the twin towers in lower Manhattan. It was a working replica of the globe with a single spotlight. Behind the globe was a set of three video screens showing the planes crashing into the towers, people jumping from the buildings and the final collapse of the towers. Had we known I don't think we would have walked into the exhibit. I couldn't shake those images we witnessed first hand on the morning of that devastating event and I still can't rip them from my mind now.

It was a relief to walk out of that exhibit and then up to the floors above where beauty prevailed. There were too many glorious images to share them all, so similar to the Borghese post I'm showing what I saw without comment. Because once again the images are far more beautiful than any words I could come up with to describe their beauty:

BUSTS