Population: 366,000
Made it on time, found our hostel, put our bags down, and went. Walked around the main city center, got lost, saw lots and lots of churches. All the churches here are built in a style unkonw to me. They're all faded brick, not really red more brownish orangy, and then the front facade is this huge slab of white marble, a lot of times with green or pink marbles wirled in, and the facade either is stripy white and green marble or just swirled and it ha a lot of little columns, a main lunette window in the middle, and giant giant giant doors from the middle ages. Actually, it was cool because all the buildings were of a certain style, medieval I'd call it, but the doors were massive, witht he bolts and big knockers and everything. So we saw Santa Maria Novella church, another one, and the biggest of all Duomo/Campanile. Its absolutely huge and had a huge circular building in front of it that was decorated in the same style and it had a belfry, later we saw a similar outlay and in Italian the circular complex was called a battisteo, I'm thinking it m ight be a baptistiere (french, never learned the word in English) but either way it's huge for that purpose, and I can't imagine it'd be a second church or chapel. Anyways, duomo was huge, the white marble again, more ornately decorated than the rest, and inside it was a lot barer than most churhces we've seen because they took all of Raphael and Mihcaelangelo's works and put them in museums for people to pay to go see. Around one giant churhc (oh yeah, all these churches have huge domes, I think they're actually classified as basilicas) in front of this one was a huge market San Lorenzo Street Market. It was those little white tents again, this time a lot lot lot of them, and inside a large building was a good market similar to what i saw in Hungary, not as good, but they had a lot of fresh menat, little epicerie type places with pastas, and on the second floor fruits and dried fruits. Dried fruits have thier following here, the actual fruit seleection wasn't as good as in other palces, and theres a suspicious lack of boulangeris in all of Italy we've found. You can't really just go buy bread. Sad. Anyways, we got a selection of dried fruits, they even had dried honeydews and dried pears and really every fruit you can think of, dried sugared carrots...Outside they were selling a lot of leather purses and sachels in all different colors and the mix of them together looked pretty, you could smell the leather too. Also tchotckes of course, eky chains, lots of scarves, soccer jerseys, statues of David. We kept walking and found more little markets, eventually hit Piazza della Republica, which surprisingly was not that special, then Piazza della Signoria which is the more famous one. It had a huge replica of David in it and a little mini statue park, a large converted church which is now a museum of some sort, and the marvelous raved about Uffizi gallery, florence's most important art museum. Prepaid tickets to skip the enormous previewed lines turned out to be completely unnecessary as there was absolutely no line, in fact all of Florence seemed pretty dead for a major town it was a little eerie. Uffizi was set up as two long corridors originally the collection of the grand duke Medici on the top floor of political offices (Uffizi), and his collection just expanded through the years. A lot of illuminations, then post-illumination Christ portraits (non golden), the main corridors had all these statues and portraits of famous patrons along the very top so you couldn't really see them well and the ceiling was by far the best part of the museum, they were gorgeously painted in a light motif with angels and vines and pastels. But the rest of the museum was not really special, there were Caravaggios, a few Michaelangelos and Raphaels and some other famous pre renaissance painters but I honestly did not see a lot of renaissance stuff, and there's a very famous painting of Eve with flowing locks of golden hair coming out of an oyster shell thats on all the covers of hte books there that we actually did not eve see. And the first floor had no art, they were taking down an exhibition. I will give it the fact that as it sits right on theRiver Tybe it had a grea t view. Other than that, not impressed. Leave the Uffizi, head over tot he river and the most famous bridge the Ponte Vecchio, also the oldest bridge in Florence. Built in the 1100s, destroyed, rebuilt in the 1300s, partly destroyed, rebuilt in the 1400s and its been there ever since. It has little houses on it and they used to be grocers markets and it was decreed sometime that they should be for gold sellers and jewelers so now they alls ell very fancy fancy jewelry. It's a sparkly bridge in any case. Across the bridge there were lots of cute shops, lots of cafes and bars with paninis and fresh pasta and desserts, there's this one type of cake it might be for Christmas called paneforte from Siena, it looks like chocolate cake with white nuts in it and its kind of expensive (its actually just nougat). Also for Christmas they do have these giant fruitcake like cakes in these big square boxes, they might ahve those in the US no sure they had them in France too. Anyways, across the bridge we find Palazzo Pitti, summer residence of the Medicis, not the prettiest palace but very big and outside it opens on the street but theres this huge tilted foreground that's just a raised concrete like there should be grass but its a concrete courtyard and a little strange to look at. Behind the palace there's huge gardens of Boboli which we did not see. We recross the Ponte Vecchio and walk over to Santa Croce, burial place of Michaelangelo, another giant white marble facade churh with a square in front of it, then walk up to Accademia Gallery where there's again no line and we go in to see David. The museum itself was again nothing amazing, fairly small, more illuminations, a statue room with lots of busts all in a row, a little special exhibition on musicians in the court and the instruments they invented (pianoforte) a real upright piano with the entire string operation like a chimney on top, old instruments that we don't use anymore today (hurdy-gurdy, serpent, and marine trumpet) and then there was David! David was worth it. He was huge, and Michaelangelo didn't make a cast mold he just carved into this huge block of marbe that was left abandoned at a cathdral in Florence and there's part of David that if he touched a little bit more would have easily fallen off, and David is from david and goliath, he carries a sling across his back, its a different david a more intellectual one, usually david's shown with the head of goliath at his feet but this is a david who is younger, who is looking out and not overjoyed with victory or full of pridebut a david who won rather by his intellect and wit, although of course he is very muscular as well. He really is very well done and very lifelike. You couldn't take pictures which was lame and it had a huge barrier ofglass around him because once someone chopped off three of his toes. Ouch. They were remade of plaster. Anyways, the entire tribune (like wing) was built just to house him, he was originally outside and then moved to the square outside the accademia gallery and then moved inside and there's two replicas of him around the city, one on piazza michaelangelo this big hill far out and one in piazza della signoria which we saw. Also upstaires there were these colelctions of Russian art depicting scenes from the bible, Christa nd his disciples, and it was very interesting mix of easter and western tradition. You couldn't really tell they were Russian except for the few words written on the wood carvings, theyw ere just little drawings of figurines. Onwards. Head back to the hostel for a sec and then over to the train station and we go to PISA!!!
One hour by train from Florence. Get to Pisa, take a really long bus route that took us around the tower but eventually made it to the piazza of miracles, inside the old fortified walls and to the giant Duomo of anotehr church, battisteo, and belfry, aka the leaning tower of pisa!! (tour penchant, torre penchente) it really leans! It was cool up close, its seven layers of white marble with each having these skinny columns encircling an open space, and on top there's a big bell inside the tower that you can't see. It was started in 1123, then left not finished for a hundred years for unknown reasons and restared in 1260 and finally finished int he 1300s and it was only on the third commencement of construction that the error was made in the positions of stones and it started to lean. Its been helped to stay up ever since, and now the EU is working on a reconstruction project that will be done in 2010, basically the problem is air particles get left on shielded parts of the tower and form these black crusts that erode the marble, also there's wind erosion on only one side, also water gathers up and causes erosions and rain causes unknown damages...lots of problems. But itw as really pretty and in the middle of this barren landscape with just the churcha nd it standing up tall (another enormous church) and there were a few little souvenir stands on the opposite walkway. Back to Florence, eat pizza, to the hostel, shower, bed, look up emails, etc. Now we're on to...
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