What a weekend of kulture. Since I didn’t blog last night, I’ll give you the rundown from my past two days in Florence.
1. Climbing to the highest point in Florence
To avoid long lines and sweaty stairs, I convinced everyone to climb the Duomo’s 463 stairs bright and early Saturday morning. The Florence Duomo (Duomo = cathedral; many big cities in Italy have a Duomo) is the highest point in Florence, or so I think. The Duomo has a huge dome on top of it designed by Brunelleschi. So on Saturday morning, we climbed the stairs from ground floor to the top of the dome to overlook the city. Sweating in the narrow and nauseating staircase was worth it when we reached the top.
2. Shopping with cow noses
Besides all the fabulous art, Florence is also known for its markets. The San Lorenzo market is filled with street venders, a bit like a flea market—lots of leather and scarves. The other market we visited is the Mercato Centrale. It’s a big mall filled with produce stands and meat markets. We planned to only look around for 45 minutes, but we quickly realized we needed more time (Rick Steves said you could spend a whole day shopping). My purchase at the San Lorenzo market was a very nice leather purse. It was a little pricey. But once the seller lit a match, pushed it against the purse, and it remained unharmed, I was sold. So now I’m sporting a great new purse.
The best purchase of the day was at Mercato Centrale: a 50 cent HUGE bottle of water. Water seems to be just as pricey as my leather purse here in Italy. Then I spotted the cheap water. Others on the trip have bought bottles 1/3 the size and three times the price. I’m pretty good at finding bargains.
Max and I with our best purchases of the day.
We also got some great roast beef sandwiches for lunch.
3. Taking pictures of the pretty David
Everyone goes to Florence and sees the David. As in, THE David. Sculpted by Michelangelo himself. Well at the Bargello sculpture museum, there’s another famous David (by Donatello) that just isn’t quite as popular as THE David. Into order to kulture myself, I spent some time at the Bargello on Saturday. I learned about this inferior David in my art history class, so I appreciated seeing it. I also snuck a couple of pictures. Oops, photos weren’t allowed.
The lesser David.
4. Going to Italian mass
The Duomo, being a cathedral, also offers mass every Sunday. So this morning, I went to mass there. The whole thing was in Italian, so I really couldn’t understand anything. It wasn’t until AFTER mass that Keara and I found the program that had the whole mass written in English.
5. Hanging with Botticelli
Florence’s two major museums are the Accademia (with the famous David) and the Uffizi Gallery. When we visit Florence as a class, we’ll be going to Accademia. So today we visited the Uffizi Gallery. My feet have never hurt so badly. I was told to wear comfortable shoes. But I didn’t. The most famous painting at the Uffizi was Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. I didn’t get to snap any pictures this time.
6. Visiting the Ponte
When I decided that I was going to Italy this summer, I was instantly excited. What better way to show my excitement than change my computer background? So I googled “Italy” to find a good picture. I picked a picture with some pretty houses over water. Now that I’m in Italy, I realize that the picture I picked is a big deal. It was a picture of the “Ponte Vecchio.” The Ponte Vecchio is a bridge over the Arno River, towards the southern part of the city. It was one of the only bridges to not get destroyed during some war (kulture). Now very expensive jewelry shops line the entire bridge.
Ponte Vecchio behind me.
7. Watching the birds
After walking the entire Uffizi, my feet needed a break. We sat on the Duomo steps with gelato (from the Grom—delicious) and did some people watching. The number of people walking around was incredible. But even more incredible was the number of birds flying around. We were sitting next to two children who also found the birds entertaining. They realized the birds were even more fun when they threw pieces of waffle at them. The birds fighting for the waffle pieces entertained us until the kids threw almost an entire waffle on the ground. The birds ATTACKED the waffle. Breaking into pieces, flying all over the place. As some pieces fell closer to us, the birds would swarm. One bird almost crashed into a lady’s head. The children were completely oblivious to the attack because their mom gathered them for a picture with the flock of birds fighting for the waffle.
Gelato outside the Duomo.
Great weekend in Florence and heading back to Orvieto tomorrow. Let’s hope the train ride is just a tad cooler than 100 degrees…
