FLORENCE!

July 9^th – 12^th, 2009 – Firenze: the city I looooove!

 

I love Florence. It’s just great. This sounds corny, but every city has a personality and I think mine aligns with Florence’s. It is big, but quaint. There are amazing museums, views, shopping, nightlife, great food. There is nothing this city doesn’t have (save air conditioning, wtf?). Anyways, Friday we went to Florence and started out with the David. It seemed like a big statue that I thought would be cool just because of how well known it is, but it was so much more than that. The thing is 17 feet tall! The sheer size of it is unreal. The depiction of a human in marble is incredible when it is right in front of you. Kirk told us about the criticisms and their defenses, but the structure is just amazing. Got a couple pics, one of his perfect buttocks, once again breaking the law but whatev. Every work we have seen just more impresses me of Michelangelo. Both his art and his business sense are just incredible. He loved money and he made LOTS of it. He was also a cook, so make of it what you will. After the David we headed to the Medici to see the family’s mausoleum. Once again, I witnessed the amount of work that goes into honoring the dead. It was a gorgeous mausoleum. We saw some of Michelangelo’s later statue work in there and he starts to get a little more abstract (more cooky), but it was cool to see after his previous work. The chronology allowed us to see him progress which was really interesting. I’ve never been a huge art buff, but this trip has made me appreciate it quite a bit more! We broke for lunch and checked into our hostel. I really wanted to stay in the city for the weekend because we were going back with the main group on Sunday, but I wanted to just chill and enjoy the city (shop) for a day and just enjoy it sans itinerary. About 10 others wanted to stay too, so we basically booked the entire hostel for the weekend. Our section of the hostel had a really cool fresco on the ceiling, which was fun to wake up to. We had a kitchen and a lot of space and an awesome location. Shwing! Found an awesome sandwich shop and gelato, duh, before meeting up with the group to climb the duomo! Now, last time I climbed the duomo I was working out about 5 times a week and I remembered that it was kind of a tough climb. 466 steps and three years of not working out later, it was HARD! The view at the top was amazing though. You cant go to Florence and miss that view. You would be a reh-tard (Hangover reference). Luckily I take lots of pictures, so I stopped periodically to “take pics” (right, more like catch my breath). The downside is it is really small up there so you have to share and go down in a reasonable amount of time. Bummer. I would have loved to just sit up there and read, or hell just look at the city. There’s like eight sides to that thing, eight views! Our professor, Jim, promised his daughters gelato for making it to the top, so we asked why we didn’t get any for scaling the church. Round two for gelato! (Hey, I climbed almost 500 stairs it was justified) We were supposed to go to another museum, but time was short given our dinner reservations, so he treated us to a glass of some real Italian wine I didn’t catch the name of! I don’t really care for whites, but it was pretty decent. Dinner was huge. First course was cantaloupe and prosciutto. The cantaloupe was great! Not a huge prosciutto fan. The first course was followed by caprese, which was followed by literally SIX whole pizzas. We were sitting at a table of six. That’s like one pizza per person. It was brutal. All of the pizza’s were really good though, so I didn’t mind the food baby that followed. We said farewell to the lame-os going back to Arezzo and prepared for a night out on the town. And a night out on the town we had! We got some wine and the boys got some liquor and the preparty began. The night ended with some club in Florence and we weasled (foolishly paid) our way into VIP where the guys all passed out on the couch and the girls danced on our table. Sorry mom. BUT it was either that or be groped by Italians, we chose the lesser of two evils. It was a great night. Very ridiculous. Surprisingly the next morning we were all fully functional, except a couple of the boys, so we went out in the town and shopped all day. Two of the other girls and I went to the markets mainly and bargained our way into some awesome gifts, both for others and ourselves. There was a storm rolling in so it was really cool that day, which was much appreciated. We all met back up for dinner and found a cool place on the Arno River to eat dinner. It wasn’t cheap, but it was totally worth it. We all needed a good meal after a night of debauchery and our group is really fun (both the entire Arezzo group and the people who stayed in Florence), so it was nice to sit there for a couple of hours and just hang out. I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a good long while. We decided to check out the Ponte Vecchio (really famous/pretty bridge..google it) after dinner and found a guy playing guitar, one man band kind thing. We just sat there and kicked it. It was a really great and relaxing night. We met up with the group Sunday morning at the Bargello and saw more works of Michelangelo. We continued to the Uffizi where I fell in love with Botticelli. We saw the Birth of Venus and I got another illegal pic! I’m all about those illegal pics of famous artworks and it will karmically (is that a word?) come back to bite me in the ass, but I like it so whatev. Saw some more artwork and was in amazement of the whole place then left for lunch. I really want to go back to Florence and spend a day in the Uffizi to fully appreciate everything in there. After lunch we went to the church of Santa Croce to see Michelangelo’s tomb, then to another church on the opposite side of town to see where some monks used to live (this is the part of the day where I feel the pain of the weekend and stop paying attention, regrettably so), and check out a square with some amazing renaissance architecture. The square has a hospital that has been there for hundreds of years and is the starting point of the ‘safe place’ for kids. There was a lazy susan that unwanted children, for whatever reason, were placed on and the nuns would take them in and raise them as nuns or monks. Our professor’s wife place their three children on there and I got a good chuckle. No worries, she collected them before we boarded the bus. We went back to Arezzo and had a nice dinner on the balcony of some really good restaurant. There was a jazz festival in Arezzo that weekend, so a couple of us went and checked it out after dinner and it was really great! There was some jazz band from a California college that was really good! It was a really great weekend and I’m glad we got to say in Florence. Although it is really touristy, I would love to live there some day. It is just a great city. This entire experience has been completely remarkable, but this weekend put the nail in the coffin that I love it here and want to return frequently if not permanently. Viva Firenze!

PS My camera won't upload pics to the compooter for some reason, but if I can get it to work pics are on the way!