My story of Florence starts in the middle of the night. Itchy. I was getting eaten alive by Mosquitos!
Here's where we're staying: 
The itching was so bad it woke me up! In my half asleep delirious state I was worried maybe I had bed bugs! I even had some phantom itching throughout the day that I had to talk myself out of! (Lets just say/remember that I had a bad experience with tiny little critters like that in Argentina haha) luckily this was just Mosquitos. Anyway our room is really hot so we have the window open, which means the street is really loud and the bugs are coming in to suck my blood. Russ didn't have a single bite and I had like 10 on my legs! It's the same with my parents, my mom will get bit a lot but my dad? Never. I guess we just have sweet blood. Even though the window being open has it's downsides it's still a cute little street 
Florence is a beautiful city & it is especially known for it's amazing art. It almost seems like a crime to see the famous things here without being very educated about it....but that's us! I love history but I never got into art history at all. So we took our trusty Rick Steve's audio tour & went to see the masterpieces here.
We started at the Academia Museum. This isn't a huge museum but good things come in small packages. First we saw the instrument collection there. I play the cello and love string instruments so this was fun.
Cellos made in the 1600's
Bass' also from the 16 & 1700's
And I don't remember what this one was called but it was fun to look at! 
What is thought to most likely be the original version of the piano
Then on to the wind section. This was a creative one! 
Here's Russ with his trusty trombone, it hasn't changed much in the last 200 years. His face shows just about how he felt about the trombone in Jr. high haha
Now we were on to the big time.
The David by Michaelangelo
Even though I'm not an art buff, I definitely thought that this was worth the hype! It was incredible! We've seen a lot of great statues, but something about the David is so real. Other statues' eyes just look glazed over, his really have emotion. Also other statues seem like they are too strong or ripped & just not realistic. But the David's proportions are perfect.
We learned that unlike other sculptors Who used molds & guides Michaelangelo would free hand all of his sculptures, that's incredible! Also the piece of marble that David is carved from was thought by other sculptures to be low quality and not good enough for them. But Michaelangelo turned it into a legend! A good craftsmen never blames his tools eh?
Originally the David was meant to go on top of the main dome in Florence. But it ended up being in front of the city hall building for years (there is a replica there now) until it was brought into it's own special museum to keep it safe. Although in 1991 a "deranged visitor" actually somehow bashed in his toes on his left foot! Crazy.
We saw David from all angles...
He definitely must not have skipped leg day at the gym ;) 
Russ was nice enought to do some editing for us...
Haha Italy's art has definitely been full of nudity.
In the hallway leading up to the David there are other sculptures lining the walkway. These are know as "The Prisoners", named that because they were sculptures Michaelangelo started but never finished. So they look like characters trying to escape their marble prison. We really liked these because it shows you a lot about the amazing process of sculpting. What a difficult art!
He was known to say that he worked when he felt inspired and that the figures came by inspiration from God, that God was guiding his hand & the work. Pretty cool. In The Prisoners you could even see actual chisel marks! 
Michaelangelo would always start in the front and work his way to the back.
It is amazing to me that they take a big piece of rock and turn it into a smooth perfect replica of a person! And in all differen poses!
In this one of Christ after he was crucified, you can really see how Christ is more finished and smooth but the people carrying him were never completed, they are still rough around the edges.
It wasn't meant to be this way but it had us thinking about how Christ is so much more polished than us in his perfection. Much more refined. Cool little lesson to think about.
Overall our experience of seeing The David gets an A+
The Academia Museum was also an art school. They have one room full of sculptures that were like students final projects. Even those students did incredible work! 
Afterwards we wandered into yet another church with an amazing ceiling. I'm telling you people, they are everywhere! 
And I also can't get over how the dome here can often be seen and it looks awesome. 
By now our art tour was really just beginning as we headed to the famous "Uffizi Gallery". That is an incredible museum. It really shows you the progression of art going from medieval times into the renaissance. Before in the paintings the people were not very lifelike, colors were dull and the portrayal of babies was quite frankly rather creepy.
In stark contrast the renaissance was focused on making things look real and three dimensional and to show movement. They started studying anatomy (often with illegal dissection) and began to master the portrayal of the human body. It was very cool to see the difference. There were many paintings, sculptures and even incredibly ornate tapestries.
I didn't take many pictures today, just a few favorites.
A very famous statue of the Goddess Venus
There was also a gorgeous view from the museum! 
I really liked this painting of "The Holy Family" by Michaelangelo.
It also has a fun story. Someone had asked him to paint this for 70 duckets, but when he finished it the guy tried to be cheap & say he would only pay him 40 duckets. Michaelangelo said no way and that now he would have to pay him double or he couldn't have the painting at all! Michaelangelo got his 140 duckets.
Well done Mikey haha
We just had to document this one. It was a free standing panel, not against the wall. So after see the front you walked around the back side, to see the back side. Handsome dwarf, too funny! 
This room of sculptures was very beautiful.
We were in the museum for about three hours (we took a little rest in the middle I'll admit). By the end we had loved what we saw! Buuut we were pretty much arted-out.
It was time for lunch. We found this amazing panini place! You filled out a paper building your exact sandwich, you could add as much as you want to it for a flat rate of 3 euro! That is SO cheap!
Paninoni I love you :)
Our paninis were great! 
We walked to this cute little park to eat lunch; paninis and delicious juice! Mmm
By now it was like 3, and we had been on our feet all day (really for days straight it feels like) so we decided to lay down in the shade for a minute. It was a beautiful day, very hot! 
. . . We woke up over an hour later! Best nap ever! Apparently we were pretty tired.
For the rest of the day we hadn't really made plans so we just kind of made it up as we went along. Russ felt like reading, I felt like running; so we each did that for about an hour. Then we decided to make a little bit of a trek up to another church. It's a little higher than the Plaza de Michaelangelo. It was a really nice walk to get there (although we were out of water & I was so thirsty after running!) we went through more of a ritzy neighborhood of Florence. I always like to see the different areas like that, especially where we've been in touristy spots most of the time in Florence.
Once we got to the church (and I could finally buy some water) the view was awesome! Even better than the view at the Michaelangelo plaza. (Unfortunately all the pictures are on a different camera) When we went inside the church there was some kind of singing service going on. Interesting.
One romantic afternoon that's for sure, oh that view! Sitting with my love, church bells were even ringing! Now whenever we have a moment where we can hardly believe this is real life we just go "church bells" :)
For the rest of the evening we just kind of wandered and enjoyed the city. We walked down through the Plaza de Michaelangelo again, Russ found a German soccer jersey with the 4th star from this World Cup, we really just enjoyed beautiful Florence.
The Search for Heaven Sauce
We spent at least an hour walking around trying to find this restaurant that Robbie & Angie loved in Florence. They even went there two nights in a row & described one of the sauces as "heaven sauce". They had explained that it was around the corner from the Uffizi gallery, even drew us a picture...buuut we were having a hard time finding it! We searched every little street for "el Bargetto". Seriously we tried hard. There was one place that kind of seemed to fit the description; but they had described it as a kind of hole in the wall type place and this one we were at was really fancy! In hindsight we think that might have been it . . . We'll have to talk to Rob & Ang later about what it looked like...big windows guys? Nice cloth napkins and a bunch of tables? Who knows. Eventually we sadly gave up our search. Alas that particular heaven sauce escaped us.
Instead we sat down in the outdoor sculpture gallery to just kind of people watch. We ended up talking to this girl from Dusseldorf Germany that is here working on a special photography book about a travel documentary or something. She was very nice and fun to talk to. She's a professional photographer and is working on expanding her artistic career. She gave us her website and we'll have to check it out later. We talked about my sister Val a little bit and how an artists career is unique and has it's own type of challenges. She immediately asked for Val's name so she could look up her music. Cutie. It's always so fun to talk to new people and find out what they're doing and why they are here.
Finally we decided to find dinner...we even searched a little bit more for the heaven sauce restaurant (really Rob & Ang, we tried!) but, no dice. Eventually we picked a differed little restaurant on a side street. Yet again it was great! Russ finally had the Lasagna he's been wanting, I had a taste and it really was great. We shared a side of grilled veggies and I had gnocchi in a Salmon sauce. Oh my lanta. Yum. The texture/consistency of the gnocchi was the perfect balance, not too soft not too tough or thick. So good. And man I tell you what that sauce? Not sure how to describe it, but it was dang good. Perfect amount of Salmon flavor without taking over. Yum!
Surprise surprise we got gelato afterwards :) I had a mixed berry and passion fruit sorbet, mmm I could go for that right now. Russ had creamy peanut and cheesecake and said it was the best gelato he's ever had!
There are gelato shops everywhere here, a lot of the time even the ice cream looks like a work of art! 
On our way home we passed what looks like a big warehouse or something but at night there is music coming out of it. Last night we went by and thought it was a night club or something. But tonight as we went by there were more signs...it's an awesome food market! Oh man it was so cool! Live music and like 10 different restaurants all combined. It's hard to explain and I don't have pictures on my phone. But if we hadn't just eaten dinner we would have for sure eaten there! It was such a cool atmosphere!! Especially
if you're a a foodie...you would just eaten this place up! (Lame pun intended ;)
So that was our art and lazy day in Florence. What a great day. We really like this city, definitely recommended!
Now it's off to bed, literally praying that none of the bed bugs bite!
No comments:
Post a Comment