Bernie Zang

I’m glad that ordeal is over.  Right after going out and buying some clean cloths I get back to our apartment and find my bag sitting in the living room.  Not quite sure how it got there, but I”m inclined to believe that it was by divine or magical powers.  I now have clean cloths and resumes!

Anyways, a trip update.  We spent all day Sunday wandering around Florence and visiting museums.  We were able to see the Uffizi, the Galleria dell’Academia, Medici Chappelle, and the Duomo.  My feet and ankles are so sore that I hobbled my way to the conference this morning.

The Uffizi, which literally translates to “offices”, is a palace of sorts that sits on the river.  It was built by the Medici family to house the Magistrate, which low and behold, was a member of the family.  Today, it houses the Birth of Venus by Botticelli, the Caravaggio Medusa, and numerous pieces by Michalangelo and Donetello.  Throughout the building, lining most of the hallways, are scultpures representing famous Roman figures, Caesar Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Caligula, etc.  It seems that the family really enjoyed that sort of thing and collects, stole, pillaged quite a few of the important pieces.  Also along with the stone pieces, paintings of famous members of the family lined the scroll-work.  Pretty impressive stuff, and lots of big painting.

The rest is a bit much to cover fully here, so I’ll just let my the photos cover the rest.  On interesting thing is that taking photos of the art inside museums are strictly forbidden in most of the museums in Florence so I wasn’t able to get any good shots.  For that matter, I got yelled at by a very angry security guard when I tried to take a picture of Venus… oh well.  I can understand no flash, but I completely forbidding any photos is a bit much.