Florence ::: Day 3 ::: Uffizi Gallery and Opera

My third day in Florence wasn't terribly exciting. I think I did laundry in the morning. Then I went to see the Uffizi Gallery, which has a lot of Madonna and Child and early Renaissance paintings, as well as Botticelli's Birth of Venus. I kind of cruised through the museum. Architecturally, the museum wasn't interesting or even beautiful inside. And seeing that sort of art outside of the context of a church makes it less interesting to me.

That night, Abby and I went out to dinner. We drank good wine, ate good pasta, and swapped past traumatic relationship stories. We then crossed the street to listen to opera. A male and female singer sang a selection of famous arias from La Traviata, Tosca, La Boheme, La Vedova Allegra, Rigoletto, and Il Barbiere di Siviglia. I know nothing about opera, but I enjoyed it. Afterward, we found a pub, drank a few a beers and had some laughs.

Abby is hilarious. First of all, she is sooo English. As you know, tea is very important to the Brits. She packed her own electric teapot, teabags and biscuits. This amuses me to no end.

Second, she has a comedic perspective on things that I really appreciate. She's kind of like the female equivalent of Bill Bryson, my favorite travel writer. Very witty, funny and over-exaggerating.

Abby was commenting on how fashionable Italian women are, and how she constantly has to move out of their way and apologize. She wondered what might happen if two Italian women were to approach each other on the street. Who would get out of the way? Would it be a battle of will? A battle of fashion? Or would they just run into each other?

And then there are the toilets. Some toilets in bars don't have seats. Abby comes back and is like, "How do they expect us to relax our muscles enough to pee while balancing on a razor's edge?" Maybe you would have to be there, but this still just kills me.

Traveling is the best way to meet people, and I am seriously going to miss this when I come back home soon.

I will, however, not miss the smell of moldy clothes, travel towels and shower sandals, coffin-like showers, flimsy mattresses, and living out of a suitcase. But I guess you can't have everything when touring Europe.