We almost always prefer to take any sort of tour as early in the day as possible. The tourist crowds get denser as the day goes in so we want to see the sights with as little traffic as we can manage. (Yes yes, technically we are tourists at that point, too, but that’s different because… oh hush.) Thus it was that in the spring of 2014 we made our way through the relatively quiet streets of the city at around 8am and met up at the pre-arranged spot at a statue just outside of the museum. Our day began with a tour of the Uffizi Museum from Context Travel. As usual, our guide was knowledgeable and interesting, full of lesser-known facts about everything we saw. She started us in the plaza outside the Uffizi, with the trio of well-known statues in the Loggia. Cellini’s Perseus and the Medusa, Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women, and Fedi’s Rape of Polyxena are a disturbing group of statues that are nonetheless beautiful and striking.

Our guide (whose name, alas, is lost to antiquity for us) was a degree’d art historian with a day job that wasn’t in her field, so she kept her hand in via this work; we’re old enough to know that “degree” doesn’t automatically mean “expert”, but she was very informed about – if nothing else – the collection at the Uffizi. She plotted a route that had essentially no backtracking (one or two galleries were cul-de-sacs so no help there…) and took us on a chronological walk forward in time from the late medieval period. The highlights that she chose included some obvious candidates (many of the Botticelli’s that you think of when you hear that name are in this collection), but she managed to point us at some real gems. For example:

Caravaggio’s Medusa is an incredibly intricate work on an unusual medium, and on top of being a mythological image it is also a self-portrait. Both of us are art appreciation amateurs and this was our first experience with Caravaggio; he remains a favorite and we’re always smiling like we ran into a friend when we find his work in a gallery. Speaking of running into art and getting excited, the Uffizi is also where we began our love affair with an obscure Biblical-era story and, more to the point, depictions of the murder at the heart of the story. (So, you know, Old Testament.) Briefly: Judith’s home city was besieged by Assyrians led by a general named Holofernes. She was a beautiful widow, and she was able to finesse her way into Holofernes’ tent because, you know, man. She proceeds to get him drunk and then beheads him. His army scatters, Judith saves the city, hooray! Early depictions of Judith often portrayed her in a virginal, even praying, position, or else demurely alluding to her story. Then, the transformational artist Artemesia Gentileschi came along. It isn’t sexism to point out that she was a woman; it’s kind of the point. Gentileschi has what you might call a different lived experience that led her to portray the comeuppance of a drunken, lustful man. Once you know these depictions exist you can find them all over the place, and we call out to each other when we find one.

But I digress.

The tour guide acknowledged up front that even three hours was barely enough time to get an overview of the collection, but we certainly didn’t feel like she shorted us. She knew the place well, and was able to layer in a mixture of facts and anecdotes to keep everyone engaged. She even went to the trouble of explaining what we weren’t seeing and, guided by that we decided not to leave the museum when the tour was over. Instead, we decided to pause and refresh within the museum before making a second circuit through.

Tucked away on the gallery’s rooftop, the Uffizi Café offers breathtaking views of Piazza della Signoria, Palazzo Vecchio, and even Brunelleschi’s Dome. It’s perched right above the Loggia dei Lanzi, so the people-watching is superb. The food is even good! Eating in museums is hit-or-miss and has varied wildly over the years, but this was a genuinely good meal. So now, when you visit the Uffizi, instead of exiting the museum you can step onto the terrace, order an espresso and a sandwich, and soak in Florence from above.

After we ate, we basically ran a second tour through the Uffizi on our own, following the advice of the guide. That’s one of the reasons we rate this tour so highly in our memories; it was so good we actually made two tours out of it. Of course, this kind of information is basically impossible to get about a tour ahead of time; it may be that we’ve set our standards too high based on an exceptional experience. These days, barring a strong recommendation or an intuition that the tour subject is too involved for us to study ahead of time ourselves, we’re more likely to read up on a place and prepare to guide ourselves.

OH. A quick note about the top photo. Lisa took that from a window in kind of a breezeway between two parts of the Uffizi. Absolutely no photography is allowed in the gallery itself. As a result, I have been in more than one person’s home who had this exact image displayed somewhere – the window you take it from it fairly small so you can’t play with perspective, and it’s the only time in the whole gallery you can snap a pic, so many people have got this view of the Ponte Vecchio as their photo “of the Uffizi.”

To begin with, what about the free tours? Well first of all, and this should not come as a surprise to anybody, they aren’t really free unless you’ve got the fortitude to look somebody in the eye who has spent two hours walking you around town and say “well, thanks!” and scoot off over the horizon, leaving them to sell matchsticks in the snow… or something. The proposition on free tours is almost always that you’re going to offer a gratuity when it’s over. For all we know they make out better by letting people set their own price rather than simply advertising a set number, but whatever works for them. Our suggestion is to just go into those tours with placid acceptance that you’ll be slipping them a couple of fins when it’s done. As far as the quality of those tours goes, honestly, they’re never that bad. Tour guides whose income is directly tied to the judgment on their work when it’s over are definitely incentivized. The only kind-of downside is that they often tilt towards entertaining in the “havin’ a good time” sense, showing you a good-time pub and maybe even sitting for a drink or three before moving on. Going on a “free” tour of a serious or intellectually rigorous topic might not be the best idea. Otherwise, they’re a pretty safe bet.

Conversely, paid tours seem to vary wildly. Maybe it’s the Americans in us but we get, er, opinions on value for money when we pay up front. The thing about paid tours is that the typical business model is that there is a company that acts as a clearing house, and they’ll develop a tour that they think will be popular; just for an example, let’s say The Louvre. They’ll advertise the tour and handle the money, and then staff up the guides as needed. But, that means your guides aren’t on the line beyond the work-for-hire relationship, and that means you can see… swings in quality. We’ll never forget some truly great tours we’ve been on, like a Ph.D. art history student walking us through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a damn-near-magical excursion through the Uffizi in Florence, Italy. But there’s also a double-handful of tours that, frankly, we forget we ever went on unless we sit and think on it a bit. So what’s our advice? Well, a couple of things. First, check out guides who have hung out their own shingles. They rise and fall on their own reputations, and if they’ve stayed in the business for more than a short spell then they’re probably going to be alright. (It would be a dishonor to the man’s memory to only talk about him in an aside, so please do read about our day with Danny Sheehy.) After that, the best you can do is the usual sifting of reviews. Go with the most recent ones you can find, and prioritize ones where the reviewer gives you any kind of details or anecdotes that can give you a sense of the guide’s personality.

What we can’t really do is provide a concrete recommendation for tours. (Danny Sheehy, mentioned above, sadly has passed away.) We used to swear by Context Travel for our tour needs, and it’s not that their quality has dropped (that we know of) but rather that their prices have skyrocketed. We’ve all got different ideas of what’s “expensive”, so that’s up to you of course, but we just ran a sample check on their site and it was north of 300USD for 2 people to join a group tour at the Uffizi. For 3 hours that just feels rich for our blood, and that’s pretty indicative of their pricing now. Any time we see a tour that they offer that sounds interesting it just always seems bloody expensive. That said, if those prices work for you we’ve almost always had a positive experience with them.

(April 7, 2014)

Sadly, I had a very bad night and hardly slept at all. Moreover, the taxi we thought we’d call to pick us up never showed, so we ended up taking the metro and NOT having time for breakfast. So today’s tour of the Colosseum, Forum, and Palatine Hill with Context Travel was exhausting and more than a little painful for me.

That said, Olivia was a fabulous docent. As is the usual with Context, she really knew her stuff and gave a lively informative tour. We would never have seen or learned as much on our own, and it was a fascinating tour. Its four solid hours of walking and standing, and the day was hot hot hot. (70* at least, and clear. May not sound like much, but back home it was high 50s and overcast.)

I managed to get a nap after lunch (at Caffe Vitta — we didn’t have enough energy to be adventurous — melon w/ prosciutto and spinach ravioli) while J. did laundry. So the afternoon was a better perspective for me.

Dinner was at Taverna Trilussa, down in the Trastevere district. This was a very different meal from the others, no fish offered for one thing. They pride themselves on their meat, and meat you shall have in abundance and variety. We didn’t order it, but you can have cured meat as an appetizer, and they will bring you a mound, at least 1/2 pound of it and nothing else. Or you can have an equivalent plate of cheese. Not both.

We shared a prosciutto with melon plate, even though we’d just had it at lunch, because it was the most accessible of the appetizers. It was delicious, the meat being very different in flavor from other’s we’d had to date. For a primi, I tried their ‘award winning’ ravioli and J. had the carbonara; they were also delicious. Tender and cooked perfectly with tons of flavor. (I like the tomatoes here, though still not raw.) We had problems with the secondi: grilled lamb with roast potatoes for me, steak with peppercorns for him. J. figured he’d just say medium, since medium rare was so underdone last night . . . and got a piece of meat that was gray it was cooked so hard. My lamb wasn’t grilled, at least not over an open flame, and lacked any other seasoning. It was also a very gristly piece of meat. Not so great. I’d go again, but make different decisions about my secondi.

Our last night in Rome ended with a lovely walk.