April 4, 2013 - Thursday
This morning I woke up at 5:50 to
get ready because we all had to meet at Piazza Cahen to catch the bus at 6:50!
Sadly, it was too early for the funicular but the bus was there… so our train
was at 7:20ish and it took around 2 ½ hours to get to Florence. But once again,
the train was nice because I just got to sleep and listen to my music for that
whole time so it was relaxing. We arrived in Florence and headed straight for
the hostel, passing a few famous things on the way. Our hostel was really nice
and we stayed in a bunch of 4 person rooms. Thursday was a pretty tight
schedule because apparently we had appointments at these museums/churches so we
had to be on time. We went to the Brancacci chapel first to see the “Life of
St. Peter” fresco cycle, which is one of the seventy frescos that will be on my
final exam in 2 weeks! So it was cool to see that in person after learning
about it in class. We then rushed over to the church of Santa Trinita where we
were going to see the Sassetti family side chapel (another set of paintings
that will be on the test…) but unfortunately we were to late and it was closed.
All of these churches have such weird hours…
We then spent the next few hours
going on a tour through town. I decided that I liked Florence a lot because it
seemed as though a lot of the important things were closer together (so we
didn’t have to walk as much as we did in Rome – although Rome was great too)
and it seemed a little more manageable. We went to Orsanmichele, the Baptistry,
the Franciscan church of Santa Croce, and San Miniato. Santa Croce is where Michelangelo is buried along with Galileo and Machiavelli (and a bunch of other people too). We also Soon it was around 7:30
and we made our way to a small restaurant near our hostel that resembled Locanda.
It had the same placemats, decorations, and they brought out big platters of
pasta that we all shared. It was pretty good pasta but it wasn’t as good as the
GELATO we got after dinner. I found my new favorite flavor, “Chai Tea Latte.”
That’s exactly what it was called and it tasted exactly like a chai tea
latte!!!! Seriously, it’s one of my favorites now. After going back to the
hostel for an hour or so after that, some of us went out to walk around and see
the duomo at night. This is where we went on the carousel and I have a video of
that but my videos never seem to upload on here…
We went back to our rooms just before midnight, exhausted from all the walking,
and had to set our alarms for 6:45am to start the next day!
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| View of Florence from the river (the brown river...) |
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| Michelangelo's tomb |
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| Duomo in Florence! |
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Baptistry ceiling in Florence
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| A casual carousel ride in Florence at night! |
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| This isn't the real David by Michelangelo but you can pretend that it is! |
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| St. Francis' cloak... also in Santa Croce |
Again, looks amazing!
ReplyDeleteThe river that you so named the brown river is the Arno and there is a gorgeous view of it from the other side up on the hill. You can see all of Florence from up there. I love the baptistry and the inside of the Duomo. Did you climb up to the bell tower? If not, you should do it some time the view from there is amazing on a clear day.
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