Firenze

On Thursday my parents and I headed to Firenze, or as we say in America, Florence.
We had plans of getting the 6:45am train from Fondi to Rome then hopping on a direct train from Rome to Florence, but, when we got to the train station I realized I forgot my passport, so I had to go back to my apartment and get it. Instead we got on the 7:54 train to Rome and then the the 9 something train to Florence.

The fake David, the one they let you take pictures of

Once we got there we had to find our way to the Gallery of Academia because we had ticket reservations to get in. Florence is the hotspot for a lot of the famous art from the Renaissance era and since my mother studied art she really wanted to go see it. The Gallery of Academia is where Michelangelo's original David statue is now housed, along with his other statues named Slaves. They don't allow photos inside the gallery and with the amount of people standing there yelling NO PHOTOS, I really didn't feel like taking my chances. But take it from me, the David is AMAZING! It is absolutely HUGE and the amount of detail that was put into this sculpture is incredible.











After the gallery we had some time to wonder around the city before our next gallery reservation. We headed to the see the church, bell tower and baptistery which were all clumped together. Once you enter into the plaza were these building are it is amazing; the size of the church alone is breath taking, but then you see the way it is painted and decorated and it just makes it even more amazing. We waited in a quick line to enter the Cathedral and look at the dome, which was designed and built by Brunelleschi. The dome of the cathedral is painted elaborately and is very beautiful.

Baptistery 

Church and Bell Tower

View of the church and dome

Inside of the dome

Me in front of the church

Next to the church is Giotto's Bell Tower, which of course I had to climb. There is also an option to climb the dome of the church, but we only had time to do one of them and I thought the bell tower would be cooler, not sure as to why. So my parents and I climbed to the top of the bell tower, 414 steps. It was a little bit of working getting up there, but the view from the top of the bell tower was amazing.

My parents and me inside the tower

View of the church and dome from the tower

Me on top of the bell tower

Giotto's Bell Tower

View from the tower

After climbing to bell tower we headed to the next thing on our list, the Ponte Vecchio, or the Old Bridge, the only thing I really wanted to go to Florence to see. It is a bridge that crosses the Arno river and it is lined with shops and is a beautiful bridge. Again, I don't know why, but it is a really beautiful sight and is so much better in person then in pictures! After seeing that, I didn't really care what we did.

Ponte Vecchio

Ponte Vecchio

We had ticket reservations for the Uffizi Gallery, which houses a lot of paintings from some of the most famous paintings done by people such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Botticelli.  The main painting that we really wanted to see was Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. Since we were kind of on a time limit because we had to get to our train, we were fine with quickly going through the rooms looking at the paintings, but we really took our time at certain ones, including The Birth of Venus. It was also nearing the end of the day, and we were getting tired, so after seeing The Birth of Venus, we were pretty much ready to go, so we finished walking through the rest of the gallery and then exited and headed back to the train station.

After a bunch of delayed trains we finally made it back to Fondi.


Italian word/phrase of the day: campanile "bell tower"