Florence-Venice

Alright, so I'm trying to finish up catching you all up with my spring break trip but I don't want to rush through it.  In all honestly though, many of the details are leaving me because it's been almost two weeks now since I left.  Holy crap it's hard to believe it was two weeks ago.

So I last left you off with my visit to the Uffizi Gallery I believe.  So the next day was Wednesday, Wednesday day we had our appointment at the Academia Gallery, which was actually a very small gallery.  It was only about 10 min away from our hostel so we got to sleep in a bit more.  We once again showed up and had to jump through hoops to get our tickets, go through two different lines and do some waiting because they wouldn't take people until 10 before their reservation time, whatever. haha.  So we finally got in and I realized how small this place is.  The Academia Gallery is really tiny compared to the Uffizi, but it's got the DAVID!  So we walked in, looked at some art and then turned the corner and BOOM, there's David.  In all his naked glory. lol.  There were also some other pieces by Michelangelo in the same room, but they weren't finished pieces.  I thought it was actually kind of cool to see how the statues develop, it's like seeing people trapped in rock, it's neat and scary. 

Dumo again

But the David was really cool to see.  I have started to have a greater appreciation for statues because it takes a lot of work to do those types of things, and the detailing is so good.  But seeing the David really impressed me, and you go to see it from all sides, so it was neat.  I felt like I saw things I never noticed before, besides his giant nakedness.  Flanking David were also some really good paintings that I started to like.  I found one artists that I really liked how he painted the Holy Family and some other paintings.  I really had an appreciation of art while I was in Florence.  So we spent a good 15 min just staring at the David, and I even learned that they monitor the statue, to monitor any differences over time of the rock, and if moments make things move around I think.  Not too sure, but they had cameras and microphones all around it to monitor it.  So we looked at the art around the David, and then went into a cool room full of busts and more statues, and then moved onto more art.  But the most of the art in the Academia was crappy iconic art, where Jesus looks like a creepy man baby and Mary looks like a man.  I really came to dislike that style so we breezed through those rooms and then left!  All in all we didn't spend more than two hours in that museum, but it was so worth it!

Inside the Dumo

After that we decided to go over to the Dumo again, and visit the inside this time.  The lines weren't long so we bought a pastry to eat in line together and waited to enter the Dumo.  Here's a refresher of what the Dumo looks like (up there) and over to your right is what it looks like inside.  Yup, it's actually pretty lame.  We got in and I was like "this is it?"  For a place so highly decorated on the outside, this sure doesn't live up to its exterior. I mean, honestly one of the only cool things about this place was the clock on the wall.  The clock had 24 notches, one hand and it was upside down.  So the 24 was where the 6 would be, and I couldn't read it at all because of the one hand.  It was a conundrum to try to read.  The altar was roped off but it was a pretty altar, and downstairs I think were some tombs,  but you had to pay and none of us wanted to do that.  I actually spent most of my time in the Dumo sitting and chatting with Abby and Jessy about philosophical and religious stuff, it was an interesting conversation that ended with a weird audio coming on that said "shhhhhh quiet please" in about 4 different languages".  So after about 15 min we left, because there wasn't much left to see and because it was freeezing inside there. 

When we walked out actually ran into some girls from our program.  We had unknowingly planned to be in Florence the same few days but were traveling with different groups.  So we ran into two girls from our program and chatted with them for a while, and then parted ways.  We hit up the Lindt store again, because who can resist Lindt chocolate when there's a store so close!  Then we went down to the leather market where we walked around, smelled the beautiful leather and also went to the market that was inside to grab breakfast food and some fruit.  We were at least trying to eat breakfast in our rooms because we have all gotten used the small breakfasts.  We grabbed some pizza were going to eat outside but then the rain threatened us yet again so we took it back to our hotel room where we passed out about 20 min after we ate.  We were so hungry and tired from walking around that we just zonked, but it was good pizza!  We woke up about 3 hours later realizing how long we slept, but were very pleased with ourselves because we were very well rested.  We went down to a nice restaurant where they had a special going on down the street from our hostel and were once again treated to wonderful Italian pasta.  But that was pretty much our whole day.  As you can see, yet again not much happened, we didn't pack our day full of stuff, we just wandered around and did what we felt like.  Our day was uneventful and it was nice to see friendly faces all the way in Italy.  I even saw someone with bags and a address tag from Bristol, CT in Rome, I freaked out a little bit!! :D

On Ponte Vecchio

Thursday was our last day in Florence, so we woke up a bit later and gathered our stuff.  Our very nice hostel manager allowed us to leave our bags in the building seeing as we had till 9 that night before we left.  We headed out and went to sit by the river for a bit.  We wandered around, and treated ourselves to some gelato before lunch because the past few days we've been too full after dinner to get gelato, which was a crying shame.  We ended up walking to Ponte Vecchio again and grabbed some lunch near Ponte Vecchio.  We sat on the bridge and observed all the tourists, and just sat and talked for a good hour or more about all sorts of random things.  It was an excellent time, we even got to help a bunch of Spanish people take pictures.  It was funny because we just playing the guess what language that is game.  So when we could pick out Spanish we would show off our awesome Spanish skills and offer to take a picture for them.  We did the same thing whenever we wanted a picture, we would just sneakily stand near someone to see what language they were speaking, haha. 

After almost 2 hours we returned to the hostel for a pit-stop and to escape the rain.  It started drizzling again on our walk back and we got inside just in time to escape the rain.  We waited it out and then ventured out again and sat by another bridge.  I was feeling pretty tired so I wanted to sit down.  While we were hanging out on the bridge we saw our friend Jen again.  She was with her friend studying in Florence and they were headed over to her apartment.  It was funny to see Jen again, because you just wouldn't think that it's a small town like that.  While we were sitting there we chatted some more and looked around and saw a damn that you could walk down to.  So we decided to hop down and go explore near the damn.  We walked all around to the dam and there were people fishing and playing basketball, it was actually kind of comical.  Then after another hour we left that dam and hopped the wall to get back to the street.  We decided to walk back to Piazza Michelangelo to look at the view one more time and walk through the garden this time.  We had gotten a restaurant recommendation from Jen's friend so we were headed in the same direction. 

It's seriously the Whomping Willow

On our walk up to the Piazza again we ran into Jen yet again! We were shocked that we ran into her for the third time that day, it was actually comical.  We also ran into some people from our hostel we had met the night before.  On our way up there we stopped to listen to a band that was playing at the restaurant up on the top of the plaza.  They were pretty good and it was free, so it was a nice way to relax after our tough climb.  We explored the garden some too, where there were gorgeous flowers blooming and I even saw what I swear is the Whomping Willow!!  The garden was really pretty and I wish we had had more time to explore, but if we were to stay on schedule we only about about 10 min in there.  It was also a cloudy, foggy day and we wanted to get inside for dinner.  So we walked back down the hill towards the restaurant recommended to us.  We found it pretty easily and were seated right outside a nice church where people were drinking on the steps (weirdly contradictory, huh?).  But the food was really
 good, just like Jen's friend suggested.  Apparently the food was so good that they had the same idea as us and ordered pizzas to go from there.  So as we were sitting at our table outside they passed us once again and we said goodbye.  She was on her way to Croatia, and we were headed to Venice that night.  So our fourth meeting up was our final one for the next week.  But it was really comical.  We took our time eating and returned back to our hostel in time to pick up our things and catch our train to Venice. 

So we hopped on the train to Venice at 9:50 and arrived in Venice by 11:30, and so began our crazy night.  We arrived at the station at 11 and were told to take one night bus to a certain location.  So we waited for the bus and hopped on and asked the driver when the stop was and he brusquely responded "no, Roma", which we later realized meant no it ended at a stop called Roma near the port into Venice.  So after asking multiple people and finally communicating with people who spoke English, Spanish and Italian they told us that this bus does in fact NOT go to where we need it, so they dumped us off at a stop and told us to wait for another bus to come, but who knew when it would show up again.  So we found ourselves stranded on a dark street with a bar across the way just waiting for a bus that might or might not show up, that might or might not be the right bus.  We used Abby's phone to call the hotel to tell them that we were late and lost and they were no help at all.  He said he sent for a taxi, but I never saw one show up.  After about 45 min and 2 phone calls later the bus we needed to show up, so we ran to it because we were across the street and Abby busted her foot.  We needed to catch that one, because if we didn't we would have been stranded.  So we finally got on the bus, with the same stupid bus driver, driving a different bus and he finally took us to where we needed to be, but it was a good 10 min walk from our hotel, so Abby hobbled and we just wanted to get to our hotel.  We finally arrived a full 2 hours after we got off the train and just wanted a sleep.  So the desk clerk showed us to our rooms and said we could pay later, thankfully, because this guy didn't know English very well.  But it was an eventful night and we vowed to sleep late and take our time in Venice. 

That was our night and all I have left is Venice and coming home.  One more installment. 

Hope you are all well, until next time!! Love you all!

Florence

So after our wonderful time in Rome we had to catch our train at 6:45 in the morning.  So we got up and said goodbye to our wonderful hotel, after helping the desk clerk from NY do some music downloading.  We caught our train to Florence and were able to sit together for this train and arrived safely in Florence at about 8:30.  We walked to our hostel, only about 5 min away from the train station again to a little places called Hotel Armonia.  It was fun by this one Italian guy named Marco and was a very small hostel, just one floor.  So that's our room, with my friend in the picture, oops.  We were able to drop our stuff off in the Hotel and go explore Florence without our stuff.  The nice guy brought our bags into our room for us and when we returned later that afternoon our stuff was waiting for us, nice and safely.

So after we dropped off our stuff we just wandered towards the river.  We stumbled upon the river pretty easily, all roads lead to the river in Florence. Then we decided to stop by the embassy to talk to them about our strange encounter at the Bologna Train Station (you all know how it ends though, we're fine).  This excursion introduced us to the strange numbering system they have in Florence.  We thought we were looking for one number and as we walked we came upon what we thought would be the embassy based on the number of the building, but it clearly wasn't.  Turns out the numbers aren't always in order, and they have the same number for multiple buildings on one street, how their mail gets anywhere is beyond me.  But we finally arrived at the embassy, with the soldiers, military truck tucked around the corner, and the American flag, needless to say it was funny to see and also kind of comforting.  The American Embassy is seriously one of the most secure embassy's I've seen, as you would expect, lol.  Well we chatted with them, got our email address to email them at and went on our way.  But not before documenting our time at the embassy!

Vista of Florence

We looked across the river and saw a really cute small waterfall and area to walk down to.  So we went across the river to check it out and relaxed for a bit.  We had 4 days in Florence so we were able to relax and take our time getting places.  After that we decided to head towards the Piazza de Michelangelo.  We stopped at a sandwich shop to pick up a light snack and walked up the giant hill to the Piazza, which I incidentally kept calling Plazas the whole time, oh Spanish...  The Piazza de Michelangelo is on top of a really big hill so it was quite the workout to get up it.  The ramps are steep, but it's totally worth the climb.

Me on the top of Piazza Michelangelo

At first I was confused because it's mostly a giant parking lot with a fake David in the center, all green and fake.  It was especially entertaining to watch the Asian tour groups take pictures with it, or take pictures really far away with all the kiosks in the background too.  But I was slightly unimpressed with the fake David and went straight to the balcony to see the view.  You can see a beautiful vista of Florence from the top of the Piazza and it was really cool to see things that we were going to see later that week.  We were able to see the Dumo, the Uffizi Gallery and even the Synagoge.  Yup, that blue dome is the Synagoge, which has a really interesting story.  We all talked about what that could possibly be for a while because it looks like a church.  We visited it later in the week and found out it's shaped like that because when it was built they wanted to blend in.  Cool huh?

We hung around the Piazza for a while and got hungry so we wanted to head down and find food.  We walked back down and found a good pizza shop near the river.  So we grabbed some really good pizza and sat on the ledge and looked at Ponte Vecchio for a good hour.  Ponte Vecchio (old bridge) is the oldest bridge in Florence.  When the Germans occupied Italy way back when Hitler destroyed all the other bridges to the center of Florence except for this one.  Stories say he thought this one was too beautiful, but who knows the real story.  Now it's one of the most famous bridges in Italy and it's really cool to walk down.  They rebuilt the rest of the bridges, but it's a pity they didn't rebuild them better because they just all look like ugly cement bridges now.  But Ponte Vecchio is now lined with tons and tons of shops of really expensive jewelry.  We walked down it and window shopped and dreamed about what it would be like if we could afford to buy something from the shops on Ponte Vecchio.  But our pizza was delicious, and we had some fun keeping the pigeons away from us.

After that we just headed back to our hostel to relax for the rest of the day until dinner time.  Rome was a whirlwind of activity so we were still pretty exhausted from the two days before.  But on our way there we bumped into the Dumo!! The Dumo is a really famous church in Florence, that is designed in pink, black and green marble...sounds gross doesn't it?  You would think so, but it's not!  It's stunning.  We were walking back and all of a sudden we were dumped into the Piazza Dumo and this giant structure was in front of us.  We resolved to visit it later because we were tired and the line was long.  But it was really cool to see it, and we also found out that it's like right down the street from our hostel, so we pretty much passed it every day on our way someplace.  So we headed back to the hostel/hotel and took a nice long nap and then looked in my handy dandy Let's Go Europe book for a good place to eat.  We ended up going to a place called Cafe Dumo for dinner and got an awesome 10 euro meal with pasta, salad and a glass of wine.  Then we had amazing gelato after dinner that we just couldn't pass up.  On our way back though we ran into a Spanish lady who was lost and couldn't find her hotel.  She was so happy that we spoke Spanish and it felt good to help someone.  After that it was off to bed because we had an appointment with the Uffizi Gallery bright and early the next day.

Lines we avoided

Tuesday Morning we woke up bright and early and took off to go to the Uffizi Gallery.  We were so happy that we bought our tickets online because once again we showed up and skipped probably a good hours worth of lines.  After going through two different lines and getting our tickets, going through security and such we were finally inside the Uffizi Gallery, which is huge!  We weren't allowed to take pictures in there, but that's fine because there was just so much to see.  I saw really famous pieces like The Birth of Venus, The Madonna of the Long Neck, The Anunciation (Da Vinci) and a bunch of other niece pieces.  Then there's tons of statues every where, and the really scary ones, I can't remember what they're called but they're statues of people frozen in horror.  So there was a lot to see, and by the time we got out of there we had spent almost 3 1/2 hours inside the Uffizi. We literally explored every single room so I was on art overload.  But I really appreciated the art I saw in there, it was really cool.  Outside the Uffizi they have even more statues and a big fountainesque area.

Giant statues outside the Uffizi

After we went to the Ufizzi it was looking pretty glum so we headed over to yet another Let's Go Europe recommended restaurants, called The Little David.  They had awesome pizza, and right as we got inside the place started filling up and it began to pour outside.  We were pretty happy that we made it to the Little David pretty quickly and felt a bit responsible for filling up their restaurant, seeing as we were the first ones in there :)  But the food was amazing, as I expected and we hung out there until the rain stopped and decided what to do next.

We looked up in my book and wanted to go someplace that had cover in case it decided to rain again so we decided to visit the Synagogue.  It wasn't very far from where we were so we headed in that direction.  But before we even got 200 feet away we were greeted with the Lindt store.  Naturally, we just wanted to go inside and look at all the amazing chocolate, then we decided that we would all share one bag of chocolates and we each got 5 of our favorite truffles.  It was so worth it, every time we turned around we were like "oh, I want that one!"  But we contained ourselves and bought 5 chocolates each and then went on our merry way, very pleased with our chocolate.  We even showed self control and monitored our consumption and ate a truffle about every hour so they didn't all disappear quickly.  When we got to the Synagogue we had to leave our bags and stuff in little lockers and no cameras were allowed, but it was fine because we were tired of having our bags with us anyways.  So we walked in and it was gorgeous!  We even realized that it had quite a bit Moorish influence, based on the architecture style inside the building and all the thousands of different designs.  Abby picked that up right away and we continued to notice more and more of it.  It was beautifully designed on the inside, and it was gigantic.  They even had a museum that told you about the history of the Synagogue which was cool too.  So we spent some time in there glad to be away from the gloom and seeing some really interesting history.  When we left the guards outside the Hebrew School said hi to us and commented on our bag of chocolate.  They so wanted some but were on duty, hahahah it was hilarious.  After that we went back to our hotel room with the intentions of taking a nap but ended up talking for about 3 hours giving each other book recommendations.  Then we wandered down to a restaurant towards the train station but got a bit lost.  We finally found it but it was very crowded so we went down the street to a less touristy restaurant with excellent pasta and wine.  We finally left after about 2 hours and walked back speaking spanish!  We confused so many people on the way back because we're American girls, and then they heard us speaking Spanish, it was entertaining and funny.

I'll do Wednesday and Thursday in the next post.  As you can see, my days in Florence were pretty docile.  I didn't do too much, we relaxed a lot and took our time getting around town.  We meandered and sat around in places, it was really nice.

Until next post! Love you all!