The Renaissance City

After leaving the Cinque Terre, our next destination was Florence (the renaissance city). However, before Florence we had to stop in Pisa to see the leaning tower. We didn't stay long in Pisa, only long enough to take the corney touristy pictures of us holding the tower up. Yes, even I could not stop myself from taking one of those unoriginal pictures. It was quite funny though because everyone was doing it and it was entertaining to watch the picture taker line up the person with the tower.

Yes...Here is the corney touristy picture at Pisa (I couldn't help myself)

Before leaving Pisa we had one last meal with our new friends, Nora and Rachel (sisters from New Mexico who were our roommates in the Cinque Terre). Nora and Rachel were so much fun! And I'm very excited to say that both of them will be moving to NY this fall. So I hope I will be able to hang out with them before I take off to Stanford.

Lauren, Nora, Rachel and I at Pisa before we went our seperate ways.

Once in Florence, our first stop was the Duomo, Florence's Catherdral. I loved the Catherdral and thought the front was very beautiful. It was covered in white tiles and beautiful sculputures and paintings in the front. I think I found it most interesting mainly because it was so different than all the Cathedrals I have seen in the past. The Duomo is also home to the first dome ever constructed. Lauren and I walked the 473 steps to the top and got a beautiful view of Florence. I still think it is amazing how they constructed such structures back then. The inside of the Cathedral was very simple. It did not have the usual ordaments, sculptures, or paintings covering the walls or ceilings (other than the painting of "the last judgement" underneath the dome. But it was still beautiful with it's simplicity.

The Florence Duomo and the Giotto Tower

The Duomo again

Inside Florence's Duomo...so different than most of the Cathedrals I have seen.

The beautiful painting of the dome

We spent a total of three days in Florence, most of them during the lovely heat wave. So we spent the days wandering the streets and markets (eating gelato), finding cool plazzas to rest in and read books in quiet and great plazzas or cities with beautiful views of the city. While in Florence we visiting the Duomo museum which houses a lot of the original art and facade from the Cathedral and the Accademia and Uffizi museums. The Accademia which housed Michelangelo's "The David" sculpture which was purely fanstatic. You don't recognize it's size until you are right beneath it. And the elegance and power the sculpture displaces is amazing. I also really enjoyed the other unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo. I thought it was very interesting to see his work in progress and be able to really see how he created those amazing sculptures. The Uffizi gallery had a lot of famous paintings (although I can't name half of them or their artist's name). But it was interesting because they had the paintings in cronological order, so you can see how the paintings developed over the years. In the museum was the original work of "The Birth of Venus" by Botticelli and another beautiful painting by the same artist. There were also a few others by michelangelo which were so beautiful. Basically by the end of our tour of Florence we had seen all of the turtles (Michelangelo, Rafael, Leonardo, and Donatello).

The Ponte Vecchio Bridge at night

A few of my other favorite places in Florence was the Ponte Vecchio bridge. I thought it was so cool, because it was a purely pedestrian bridge with jewlery shops lining its side walks. And at night it turned into a great hang out where people could come and sit and enjoy the beautiful river and local muscians playing. We were lucky to walk there one night and be able to sit and enjoy a local musician! One night we also saw a mime act in the street! Now that is what Florence is supposed to be all about...the music and artists!

The view of the Duomo from Michelangelo's Landing

Another picture from Michelangelo's Landing of the Ponte Vecchio Bridge

On our last afternoon in Florence, when we were getting tired of the heat...we took refuge in the nearby city of Fiesole. It was a beautiful and simple town on one of the surrouding hills and a great retreat to relax, read and catch up on my journaling. It not only had amazing views of the city...but a lovely breeze to cool us down!

Overall, I thought Florence was great...for it's museums and art gallerys. But for me it was too hot and had way too many bugs! Lauren and I got eaten alive (mainly Lauren though...poor thing has the worst luck!). But we were happy to leave but glad we were able to see some of the world's greatest art.

Me rubbing the Boar's nose...supposedly if you did that you're destined to return to Florence.