When in Rome...

We woke up Thursday morning with a limited amount of time, but reasonable enough that we knew we could visit the Uffizi Gallery.  We were considering smashing this visit in yesterday after the Cathedral stuff, and see something else today, but the kids decided they'd rather have a little more down time and not try to rush anything.  Maybe they just didn't want to take the chance of an extra museum?

There are loads of important pieces of art at this gallery, but some of the more famous ones include Pierro della Francesca's Duke and Duchess of Urbino, Botticelli's Primavera and Birth of Venus, and various paintings by da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Raphael.  We ended up spending just under 2 hours here; we took our time and saw a lot of the museum, but we were in the end limited by both time and child patience.  We quick got back and finished packing our bags, and had to check out of our AirBnB by 11:30 (Thanks to Gaetano who said we could check out just a little later).

Botticelli's Birth of Venus

Primavera (Spring)

Michelangelo's Holy Family - the only known tempera panel by him

Put up your dukes (or duchesses)

View of the cathedral from the Uffizi

Mary with Madonna of the Goldfinch

Young da Vinci painted the left angel's face on his master's painting

Caravaggio's Medusa Shield painting.  eww, creepy

Our train didn't leave for about 2 hours, so we let Katie walk the whole time, so our 20 minute walk turned into about 50 minutes.  Okay, there's almost half our wait turned into toddler joy!  What else can we do for them.... how about McDonalds?  cue excited squealing  We went in to check pricing etc. and just when we walked in enough seating for 6 opened up, this seemingly divine intervention granting us relief from our backpacks and our hunger.  They had a family deal where you could get a happy meal and 2 adult combos for 14 Euros or something.  This ended up saving us about 5 bucks, so the kids all got HMs.  The meal killed all but 20 minutes of our waiting time.  They announced our departure platform about 10 minutes later and we took our seats.  And an hour and a half later we were in...

ROMA!

And when in Rome, do... well.... not a whole lot really.  We only had a bit of the afternoon, and our check-in with Pietro took a while but was very informative.  We could tell he was very passionate about making sure his guests have a good time in his city, and he spent almost an hour explaining places to go and when to go.  So we called our mothers, caught up on our bloggin', Melissa went down to the corner of the block and got some groceries, and we stayed in.  Not really because we were tired, but more so we could get to bed early and set off early tomorrow morning.  Kids were in bed before 9, but we were up getting things ready and done until probably midnight.  All in the day of a world-travelling family of six.

Someone decided they were done walking.

Why is my child crying? Because she ate the last chocolate.