Firenze

Originally posted on my Tumblr travel blog, A Roman Spring with IES, in 2008.

This past weekend I traveled by train to the historic town of Florence. My friends Rigo, Sarah, and I took an early train that left from Rome and reached Florence by 10am. The ride had beautiful views of the Tuscan countryside. However, it was spoiled by the length of the ride and the numerous amount of stops we made. Anyhow, after meeting up with Sarah’s roommates, we headed to our hostel which was just a couple of blocks from the train station. It was a very nice hostel and I got to room with the group of people that booked in the same hostel which was nice because many of the backpackers that were there didn’t speak English.

After getting situated into the hostel, we headed out to do some site seeing. We first hit up the large cathedral, called the Duomo, situated in the heart of Florence. It is truly a breath-taking structure. The outside is colorful and decorated, not only on the front facade, but also around the entire building! It is even accompanied by a separate bell tower designed by Giotto and a Baptistery. The cathedral itself has a huge dome that people can go up to the top of. And of course we had to do that! It was a very long walk up the hundreds of stairs, but it was totally worth it. There were stops on the way up that you could admire the beautiful frescoes located on the inside of the dome. Upon reaching the top of the dome, one could see over all of Florence and make out the mountains surrounding the city. It was an absolutely amazing experience that I am not likely to forget anytime soon.

After the trek, we needed to fuel up again. And what better to do that with than gelato! Florence, being the birthplace of gelato, has many famous gelaterias that make some of the gelato in the world. I can attest to this. The texture and richness of the ice cream is indescribable. While in Florence, I tried at least 6 different flavors, and all of them tasted amazing. Even flavors I was a little hesitant about, such as rum, were better than anything I have every tasted in the States.

Day two was an early one. We got up, ate a quick breakfast provided by the hostel, and then headed out to the Uffizi Gallery. Uffizi is a large art gallery that houses many famous pieces of art, such as The Birth of Venus and Piero della Francesca, along with many other great paintings and sculptures.

Honestly, I have not been much of an art-admirer in the past. However, during this trip to Florence, I have found a great love for sculptures. Especially ones that provoke a great emotional scene or portray the beauty of the human body. In the courtyard in front of Uffizi, there are many original and replica sculptures that are found especially intriguiing. One in particular, The Rape of the Sabine Women, I was dumbfounded by. The artist gave great attention to the detail of the expressions and shape of the humans beings that give the sculpture a life-like quality.

Uffizi took me two and half hours to complete. It is absolutely enormous and is quite an experience. I still can’t believe how many ways these artist can paint one person in particular, Madonna (The Virgin Mary). I got pretty fed up with the number of times I saw these religious paintings, but I really can’t complain when the Catholic Church was the one employing these painters. Overall, a great experience and I would say that it would be one of the main reasons to visit Florence.

After Uffizi, I lost my group of friends, so I decided to do some walking. I found a street market that found an assortment of leather products. In fact, that’s basically all they had in Florence, as far as shops go. Leather boots, shoes, coats, purses; you name it, they have it in leather. Later that day, I caved in and bought some leather shoes (don’t worry Mom and Dad, they were fairly cheap compared to the other boots and shoes bought by my friends).

That night we went to dinner as a group, along with Sarah’s friend Jonathan, who studies in Florence, and Kent, a Canadian we met from the hostel. The restaurant was a little over priced, so we decided to buy the cheapest meals we could. Even the cheap meals were delicious. Italy sure knows how to eat!

Day three I headed out early to the Accademia Gallery. Basically the only reason this gallery exists is to house Michelangelo’s David sculpture. Don’t get me wrong, there are other great pieces of art in the gallery. However, I think that their significance is somewhat dwarfed by the David. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take any pictures, so you will have to Google them if you want a glimpse of the amazing piece of art.

David was amazing. Simple as that. It was carved out of one block of marble and is so life-like that if you sit and stare at it, you would swear that he is breathing. There is so much detail that goes into his face, hands, arms, and even toes. The group of girls I went with sat and stared at it for 40 minutes. It was just that impressive.

The other art in the gallery was also very cool, but I was a little burnt out from Uffizi the day before. There was also a back room filled with sculptures that I enjoyed. However, I was quite disappointed when I realized that about 90% of the sculptures were made of plaster and were only used for testing purposes before working the marble version. This kind of upset me, because I wanted to see the marble finished product. But then I realized the true significance of the marble sculptures absences. It meant that the original marble works were still in their original locations, placed around cities and churches, or on top of graves. I now appreciate how amazing it is that these original works still sit in public places around Italy for our enjoyment.

The last thing we did Sunday before heading home was walk across the Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge still standing in Florence, to Piazzale Michelangiolo. This Piazza gives a great scenic view overlooking Florence. It also houses a bronze replica of the David sculpture (man, the Florentines love their David!). It was a really nice day out and it was great just to lie out in the sun and enjoy the view.

Around 5pm we jumped on a train and headed home on what I believe was one of the slowest trains in Italy. It took around 4 hours to get home, besides being late to leave Florence, so I was quite tired when we finally got into the Rome. All in all, Florence was a great time with great food, art, shops, and friends. I would go back in a heart beat.

For those of you who made it through this post, I commemorate you. Miss you all. Ciao!

Stephen