A Merry Christmas Gift

Just a quick note to say "Happy Holidays" to All and "May you have a Blessed and Bountiful New Year"!!

A friend gave me a wonderful present today - she purchased photographs that spelled my name and framed them in a very heavy glass frame - I LOVE it!!  How cool is that? (I do think she was glad my name is short!)

9/20 Pitti Palace

After lunch we headed for the Pitti Palace - once inside the galleries, no photos were allowed, so we ended up buying books and postcards...and we got a few shots before going inside...

 

9/20 Ponte Vecchio

The Old Bridge - crossing the Arno River where the river bed is narrowest, it is the oldest bridge in Florence and the only one to survive intact during WWII.  After many wooden structures burned down, this sturdier bridge was built in 1345; during the Medici heydays in the 1500s, it was reserved for goldsmith shops.  The small windows you can see on the top story of the bridge is the Vasari Corridor, which links the Palazzo Vecchio with the Pitti Palace....

9/20 In the Uffizi Courtyard

The sensory overload was amazing.  We actually decided NOT to go into the Uffizi Gallery...only a couple of days in, and already paintings were beginning to look alike and statues were looking massed produced...a horrible thing to happen to your art perception!  But just the courtyard was fascinating...with plenty of scuptures and performance artists...

9/20 - The Ordinary Tribunal

I'm sure it used to be a church before it became the courthouse...