Uffizi Gallery - 09,.03.06

The gallery is a not-too-big museum full of beautiful paintings. Our reservation is for 8:45, the first admission of the day, so we follow the line of tour groups up the stairs to the 4th floor (or, if you're in Europe, which we are, the 3rd floor; can't we all get together and standardize this one little thing?).

We have of course been building to this moment, the Uffizi being pretty much the ultimate can't-miss thing in Florence. Which makes it feel a little bit like an AP test in Art History or something. Every room we enter presents new works of art which I keep thinking I am supposed to have studied up on beforehand, so that I can quickly and deftly identify and mentally check off the important elements in each work: perspective, color, subject matter, composition, and so on. Instead I am hurriedly checking my crib sheet (DK's excellent Florence and Tuscany) for an overview of what's in each room, then wandering from painting to painting and making my own decidedly non-AP-level assessment: "This one pretty, that one creepy, that other one unbearably ugly - ooh, this one nice!" It actually works pretty well, and I enjoy the gallery.

There's a painting in one of the late-Renaissance rooms of a man with red hair who looks kind of like me. Weird.

One gripe that we all share: many inexplicably roped-off rooms. Why are they hiding so many paintings from us? Didn't we pay our full 9.50? Is it like this in summer? Who knows?