Florence

On friday, we went as a class to Florence with our Italian professor, Marco. He only stayed with us until about 2:00 pm and then we were on our own. A group of us were able to book a hostel for the night so we were planning on staying until saturday evening. When we were with Marco, we took us to the Duomo/Baptistery/Bell Tower and I saw several gypsies (one of which tried to spit on Wendy, the wife of one of the professors from the Santa Chiara program). So if you ever go to the Duomo, beware of the gypsie stationed at the door to the Capula (dome). Apparently she's known for doing this! Next we went to a few smaller not-as-well-known places: Dante's house/church. And he showed us the first "skyscraper" built in Florence (5 stories high). But then we eventually made our way to Santa Croce (Church of the Holy Cross). This church houses several tombs of extremely important people to the Italian culture (for example: Galileo, Dante and several other artists and people alike). This is also the church that is attached to the Medici family's private Chapel. For those of you who aren't history buffs, The Medici family was the extremely rich and powerful family that ruled Florence for years and were known as "The Godfathers of the Renaissance". They didn't have many friends in Florence and there were several plots to kill the Medici family members, so they spent most of their days in hiding and traveling through Florence in an elevated passageway so that they could not be reached easily by the hostile townies.



Okay, but back to my Florence adventures. So, at this point, after our Santa Croce visit, we were set free to do our own thing. Well the first thing we did was to check into our hostel so that we could drop our bags off (which were killing us). (By the way, a hostel is an extremely low-key hotel like establishment that is mostely for students who are traveling and its usually a share-bath, private bedroom situation) Hostels are much cheaper and much more rational for our travels, since we are never at the hostel. Afterwards, we continued our own tour of the rest of city. We stopped by the river so that we could get a good view of Ponte Vecchio (Bridge Vecchio). This is the bridge that is covered with stores, because back in the day there was law that taxed any store that was located "on Florence land", so these business entrepenuers found a loop hole and started building thier shops on the bridge (on water) so that they could not technically be taxed. Today there's still tons and tons of stores on the bridge, and they are ALL jewelry stores. So the second you step onto the bridge you are blinded with shiney dimonds and jewels from all sides. (And they are extremely expensive). But they do have the prices in the windows so you can always look and see the cost before you actually enter the store (most stores in Florence are like this). Florence has excellent shopping.. everywhere. So if you plan to do some good shopping, you should save your money for Florence. They are also known for their leather products and I saw some pretty awesome jackets and purses. And I was tempted, but I didn't give in! (But I did try on several jackets and some pairs of shoes) hehe.



This pretty much summed up our friday in Florence. When we woke up on Saturday morning it was sun-shiney and blue skies, so we were thrilled (because it rained the entire day friday and it was supposed to rain on saturday). We decided we'd better hurry up and make our way back to the Duomo so that we could climb to the top of the Capula to get an awesome view of Florence. So we did it, we climbed 496 steps to the top. (some of which was a spiral stair case and some of which spiraled around the dome and then eventually went staight up the side of the dome) It was a good trek, but fortunately we weren't too winded and if we were, we totally forgot the second we stuck our heads up out of the man whole at the top. With the bright sunny day, the city was absolutely beautiful! The red terra cotta roofs with the contrasting white stone buildings as just amazing. Our professor said that technically Florence wasn't a "beautiful city", but I'm disagreeing with him 150%. None of the pictures I took, although still good, don't do any justice to this view. So the one thing I would reccomend for anyone traveling to Florence would be, to climb to the top (its costs 8 Euros) but its worth that and much more. And you also get up close and personal with the frescos on the inside of the Dome as you are going up. They were within not even 2 feet of my reach and they are HUGE and insanely awesome! They depict the "Last Judgement" so theres angels and apostles near the top of the dome and down where we were walking there was devils and demons that were pulling the sinners down into hell (and in some cases eating them). It was way cool.



That mostly sums up our saturday, because after that we spent a good chunk of time shopping and then stopping for lunch and we hopped on the 5:00 pm train back to Orvieto. There were some things that I would still love to see in Florence, but we are headed back on friday again, so there is still time left to see everything else, and maybe somethings again. But I have one more peice of advice for those of you ever planning to visit Florence:

Italy is know for having excellent gelato (ice cream), which is more like a frozen custard/frozen yogurt, and they are tons and tons of flavors, all of which are amazing. But, anyways, in Florence some of the gelato stores have someone standing outside cooking waffles and the smell is very enticing, so they suck you in and the want to give you a waffle with your ice cream and then when its all said and done you end up owing over 10 Euros for an ice cream and a waffle. (This did not actually happen to me, but rather to another friend I was traveling with). So, avoid the waffle places and just go to a more hole-in-the-wall joint and you'll be much happier. You should look for somewhere that offered a medium size cone with 3-flavors for around 2 - 2,50 Euros. So, you sum up: beware of the waffle gelato shops, and the gypsie that stands by the Capula entrance to the dome.