Firenze

Trying to play catch up again...am now three weeks behind...

So I really should be working on my art history site presentation, my art history midterm, or my ancient city site presentation, but I find myself way too overwhelmed to even think about doing that. Instead, I will blog (lucky you).

Two weekends ago, myself and three other people went to Florence! Not only was it great to get out of busy, congested Rome to a quieter place, Florence was amazingly beautiful and full of fantastic things to see. To get there, we had to take the 75 bus to the train station in Rome and from there hop on a train to Florence. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, we missed the first train (the slow train) because of the art history field trip, so we had to spend more money on the fast train. Not a problem, but not easy on the wallet (thanks, Mom and Dad!). Our hostel was right in the middle of the city, pretty much down the alley from Santa Crocce (back to what it is in a second).

We got to Florence and took a cab to the hostel, as we did not yet know that Florence is about the size of a postage stamp, and our hostel was only a 10 min walk away.

Anyway, I Florence felt like disneyland...almost. It's so small, so clean, and just appears and feels like a higher class city. People in Rome are usually extremely well dressed, but everyone in Florence is well dressed. Case in point that Florence is disneyland: one of the girls I was with lost her wallet. The next day, just because it seemed dumb not to, she checked at the police station to see if it had been found. Not only had it been found, but all of her stuff was in it, including the 100 euro she had just withdrawn from an ATM. Yeahhh...disneyland. In fact, I'm not even sure that would happen in disneyland.

We managed to see Santa Croce- where Michelangelo, Galileo, Dante, and various others are buried, The David (duh), Piazza Michelangelo- which gives a panoramic view of Florence (after a trek to the highest point in Florence), and the Duomo (Santa Maria del Fiore)- which also gives an incredible view from the top of its dome, a total of 463 steps and some incredibly scary passageways.

I'm not good with heights.

Here are some pictures!

Piazza Michelangelo!

That's the Duomo in the background

Yeah, we were at the top of that dome

Clearly I stayed by the wall

The second day was our short day- alas, dirty, congested Rome that I have grown to love awaited us. And so did a hefty quiz and a new week of lectures. Before we left though, we absolutely had to get into the Uffizi museum. It's Florence's best museum, or at least I think so, and has Botticelli's famous "Birth of Venus" and "Primavera" paintings. They've got a massive collection of marble busts (mostly roman emperors, though also some other characters, like the emperor's boy toys).

I could have spent all day staring at the Botticelli paintings though...they were so beautiful. They're from about the 1480's, so their not terribly sophisticated like Michelangelo or Raphael paintings, but there's something mysterious and almost terrifyingly beautiful about them. I don't know how other people feel about them, but I loved them.

I know I say to google things a lot, but really, GOOGLE these if you don't know them, because I kind of fell in love with them. Especially "Primavera". I wasn't allowed to take pictures, hence why I haven't posted any, and I don't really want to deal with copyright laws by posting them.

Also, sidenote, I definitely splurged and bought a leather jacket. Florence is known for its leather, after all! I got mine at the leather market near the Duomo. What an experience. It's a lot like shopping in Tijuana- people yelling at you, and overly aggressive shopkeepers. I went into one place and started looking, only to be what can only be described as accosted by the owner telling me to try this jacket, that jacket "I'm the designer" blah blah blah. There was one that clearly did not fit, though he kept saying how he would fix the cuffs on the sleeves. Uhhh...sorry buddy. Pretty much what you have to do is grab your bag and place the jacket on a shelf and literally walk out.

I can't imagine that guy sells many coats that way. I found one though....makes me feel a little more stylish in a place where I stick out like a sore thumb!

The ride back was on the slow train...4 hours. I guess it was nice, I got a lot of homework done, but that's super boring.