Italia Day 7-9: Firenze

Now we are train experts and got on the right train the first time to Florence. It was great chatting with a nice couple from Dubai on the way down, and of course there was a long pause when we said we were Americans. They were friendly with us once they knew we were not your typical run of the mill Americans. Of course we did not rise to the debate when they said that democracy is wrong and that a monarchy is a way to go.

Florence is a city where I can show off my geeky architectural history side of myself since Florence was the birthplace and home to many of the Renaissance greats! Michaelagelo, Raphael, da Vinci, Botticelli and many others! If we thought is was rainy before this is really where is started to lash from the heavens. Big fat, lets get you soaked to the bone in 5 minutes type rain. Amy was such a dote and helped me reserve all of the hotels a head of time right next to all the train stations. My new cork shoes started falling apart since they got so drenched. I loved the thunder and lightening though! That way, no worries, we pull in and go straight to our hotel. The food is good since we both love Italian food, I am just glad we walked so much since we were eating and drinking so much. This was the expensive part of the trip. Every museum was €7 per person and the catch was, they would building the museum around one significant piece of artwork. Michaelangelo's David had to be the first on the list. All I have to say is Michaelanglo was the MAN back in his day, and would still be pretty amazing even today. An architect, engineer, painter, poet and a sculptor. David was worth the wait to see. That statue is just amazing! After viewing the original, we had to go see where it originally stood in the Palazzo Vecchio in front of the Medici palace. And this is where the rain kicks in once again so we had a rest sitting among the many covered statues at the Palazzo just to people watch. There was a security man who walked around telling people not to eat or drink around the statues or bring their dogs through. We made up, or shall I say, I made up funny stories about what the security man was saying to everyone just to entertain us. I like stories, especially bed time ones.

The next day there was, surprise, More Rain! To keep as dry as we could we headed to the Santa Croce basilica that contains the monumental tombs of Galileo, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Dante and Donatello. After seeing Donatello's tomb, we had to go see his David. After traveling across town we got to yet another museum that contained a few Michelagelo pieces, but most importantly Dontello's David. I studied the David's quite a bit in school and wrote many papers, so I was quite excited to see them both in person and yet was even more let down to see David under reconstruction. Such is my luck. To make up for that loss we went into the Uffizi Gallery that contains many of the great Renaisance works and so much more. The main important piece that I had to see was the Birth of Venus by Botticelli. I just worked the 4,000 piece puzzle of this over Christmas. This is my favourite painting of all time. Luckily I could spend as much time as I wanted in front of it and it was viewable! Lippi, Titian, Caravaggio, Dürer, da Vinci, and Raphael were abound here. It was amazing how much history flooded back into the front of my brain as I shared with Ben and started noticing other tourist following me around as I could tell the story of the greatest painters and sculptors in history.

After seeing some of Mike's pictures when he did his backpacking after graduating we to see the crown jewel of architecture in Florence is The Duomo by Filippo Brunelleschi the Santa Maria del Fiore. After countless steps we got to the top to have the panoramic view of the city. Florence is a beautiful city and was well worth the climb and the slight fear of heights when ascending that far up. The best thing about this city besides all of the Renaissance stuff is the wine, and the dinners were made all the much better with it! Got to hand it to the Italians, between the architectgure, the wine and the food, it is a great place to be.