Today’s our last full day in Florence. It’s a bit of a bittersweet day. While we’re determined to make the most of the day, we know our time here is almost up. Today’s the day we’re visiting the Uffizi and then our last fancy-pants dinner of the trip.
We headed over to Santa Croce to start the day. We took a rather meandering path to see of the neighborhoods we hadn’t yet explored. We snuck up on the back of the church and actually headed into the Scuola del Cuoio. This is a leather working school that was started after World War I to help give war orphans a trade and a way to support themselves. The quality and craftsmanship of the goods here is fantastic, especially after days of seeing the knock-off stalls around the central market. Several of the purses actually caught my eye, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to make an investment.
We head to the front of the church and head inside. In addition to the frescos and other artworks, this church is home to both tombs and monuments of many famous people. Michelangelo’s tomb is beautiful, but I was surprised to see a monument to Enrico Fermi sitting next to the monument to Marconi. It seemed that all too soon, even though we were only 3/4s way through the church, we needed to go to get to the Uffizi for our time slot.
Like many of the places we visited on this trip, reservations or pre-purchased tickets are a must, unless of course you enjoy standing on-line for hours. Beware, my fellow American travelers, that you use the correct Uffizi Gallery website to buy your tickets! You want to go to www.uffizi.it instead of the .com or .org that Google wants to send you to from the States. The official site will then send you, somewhat confusingly, to b-ticket.com. You can use this same site to purchase tickets to the Boboli Gardens, the Accademia Gallery, and other sites around town. For the Uffizi, you are purchasing tickets for a particular time slot. I found the directions that came with the tickets to be somewhat lacking. So that you may learn from my confusion:
After placing your order for a timeslot on b-ticket.com , you’ll receive an email with a confirmation code. Note that much like the pass for the Duomo, you do not need to print out this email. On the day of your reservation, you’ll want to get to the Uffizi 15-20 minutes prior to your time slot. Once there, you’ll want to look for Door 3 as pictured here. This door will be on the west side of the ‘U’ formed by the wings of the Gallery.
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| The sign for the door where you’ll pick up your tickets |
There will likely be a short line at this door. Once you get in, you’ll need to show your confirmation email and potentially a photo ID (I didn’t have to show mine, but it does tell you that you’ll need it in the confirmation email.) to get your tickets. With tickets firmly in hand, you’ll had back, directly across the ‘U’ to door one. This is where reserved entrants get access.
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