Florence, Italy

I arrived in Venice on May 16, and immediately met with a coworker and took a train to Florence for the weekend. I was quite exhausted from the long flight (in which I lost my US cell phone, so if any of you want me to have your number, please email it to me), but decided it would be boring to sit around the hotel in Venice all weekend by myself. Tri and I arrived in Florence, checked into our hotel, got some dinner, and then I pretty much passed out while I was walking back.

Florence Pictures
I wish I had more pictures, but they don’t allow cameras in most of the art museums.

Saturday, Tri’s cousin and his friend met us and we did a bit of exploring. We saw Uffizi Gallery, and Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (il Duomo di Firenze) in the afternoon. Uffizi is an art museum housing a lot of Italian Renaissance paintings and sculptures. I actually recognized a few pieces that I was forced to memorize in Art History in college, such as ‘The Birth of Venus’ by Botticelli, and other works by da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Caravaggio. The Basilica is a beautiful old cathedral designed by Brunelleschi with colorful marble panels.

Later that evening, we came back to the Basilica and climbed to the top from the inside. This provided a great view of Florence.

We went out on Saturday night and found more of an “American” style place to drink. It had a walk-up wooden bar, darts, and in the back was a big karaoke room with a DJ. I know karaoke sounds sorta stupid or more specific to Asia…but since Florence has a lot of college students studying abroad, it was mostly filled with drunk Italians and Americans singing Journey songs, which everyone loves.

On Sunday, we toughed out the ~2 hour wait to get into Galleria dell’Accademia which contains Michelangelo’s statue of David. Everyone’s seen pictures of this before, but it was much better in person. The statue was a lot bigger than I thought it would be, and set in natural light in the middle of a domed type hallway. While moving with the crowd around the statue, people were ranting in awe about how big his hands are, or how well sculpted his butt is, or how sexy his curly hair is. At first, I mistook all of these compliments as directed at me…but I soon remembered the statue.

(Obviously, not my picture)

I bought a language book for travelers at the museum and commenced mastering Italian at this point. You will have to check back in with me later to see how that is going. Tri and I took the 2.5 hr train back to Mestre that afternoon, and I got ready to start work the next day.