Italy day 18 - A farewell to Florence and a better guide to Uffizi tickets

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.

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.

Try to fend off the tour salespeople trying to convince you to join a guided tour for 'just' another 15 Euro while you wait for your chance to enter. Once they let you through the ropes, you'll have to go through security. You will not be able to take large backpacks or other luggage. You may want to use this time to download Rick Steves' Uffizi Gallery talk if you haven't already.

Rick's tour of the Gallery's was great, even though we had to skip around a little bit because they had rearranged some of the rooms since the tour was recorded. It was really interesting to see the progression of art from the Middle Ages into the Renascence. I particularly liked seeing Davinci's unfinished painting because of the insights it provided to his process. The only negative was that we had 12:45 reservations and the crowds were nearly intolerable. If at all possible, get the earliest reservation you can because it will mean fewer people crowding in to see the painting you're trying to look at.

After spending several hours at the Uffizi, we worked our way back to the leather school. I decided that my souvenir from this trip (in addition to the wine) would be a new purse, suitable for work events. If you happen to be in Florence, I highly recommend this school for your shopping needs.

We worked our way back to the hotel to get cleaned up for dinner. We then walked back toward the Uffizi to La Bottega del Buon Cafe. I won't subject you to a slew of food photography (That was Kris' job on this trip! ;)) but suffice to say that dinner was lovely. All in all an excellent way to end a fabulous trip!