Firenze

I'm sitting here on a ridiculously nice Sunday afternoon (it's gotta be close to the 60's and not a cloud in the sky) desperately trying to find a place to watch the Super Bowl tonight. I don't think I've ever missed one, and if I can help it I want to find a place where I can at least watch the first half. Also, classes are starting tomorrow, although I'll actually be spending a lot less time over at the center now. Nothing can compare to last semester, so all things considered this semester should be a breeze. So anyway, I went to Firenze (Florence) yesterday, and pretty much our whole class decided to go except for a few people. It's definitely the most beautiful place I've ever been in my life, but it was also my first trip outside of Bologna in Europe. I took about 150 pictures yesterday, but unfortunately I ran out of space on the blog to upload pictures without paying. For all 6 of you keeping track of this blog, from now on any pictures that I post will be uploaded to my Facebook instead. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning after getting about 4 hours of sleep the night before and headed to the train station for my 6:45 train. It was still completely dark when we left, and by the time the sun rose we were in the country next to this ridiculous mountain range that pretty much runs all the way through Tuscany (Florence is the capital city of Tuscany). The mountains were like nothing I'd seen before, but if I could make a comparison to my past experiences it reminded me a little of West Virginia, except if there were 700 year old towns at the base of the hills. The mountains were much more sharp and jagged, though. The train ride lasted about an hour, and we got out at the Santa Maria Novella station, which is notorious for pickpockets. Ma, I never thought I'd use your money belt but I put my passport in there, so congratulations. Everyone else was making plans for the day, but I kind of figured I'd just float around and see what I liked, and maybe even get lost for a little bit since those usually end up being the best days, rather than just following a strict schedule. We got out and saw the old cathedral of the SMN, which was pretty but we have enough really old churches in Bologna that it didn't really grab my attention. Then we walked toward the center-everyone wanted to use the maps, but I kind of just wanted to sniff the places out, man style. Turns out I was right, by the way, although there's a giant tower and dome in the middle of the city to guide you. Before we even got there, I guess I stumbled upon Erin's apartment from when she was studying in Florence. She told me to look out for some statue of a boar, and I basically tripped over it when we were wandering around- I took a picture of a building that looked pretty old and cool and it turned out to be her apartment building. Weird. We headed towards Il Duomo (the dome) di Firenze, which is the most beautiful building I've ever seen. It's like a skyscraper, and the tallest building in the center of town. The outside has blue stripes and so many statues- I can't really describe it that well so just check my facebook out for the pictures. We found a little bar to grab some breakfast, and then the girls wanted to head to the Uffizi. I wasn't sure if I had a reservation or not, so I just stayed back by the Duomo, and basically wandered around  the center for another hour or so until Nick and Brian met me at the church. We went inside and down to the basement where there were some graves, but we really didn't know anything about it so it was kind of a ripoff. Brian and Nick really wanted to climb to the top of the Duomo, but at first I wasn't really into it, I kind of wanted to climb up the tower instead. I'm so glad I let them talk me into doing the Duomo though, because it turned out to be one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life. The church was started in the late 1200's, I believe, and wasn't finished until the 1400's. I wikipedia'd it, and apparently it was the largest dome in the world until the modern era, so it's true because Wikipedia is 100% right, all the time, no matter how much your professors want you to find information in so called "books." I've said this 100 times on facebook already, but most people will recognize this church from Assassin's Creed. What's really crazy is those bars that they have in the video game, which you assume were just put there to help you climb actually exist. To be honest I've only played the game over at Petey's so I really don't know much about it, but I knew enough that I was able to successfully climb up the outside of the building all the way to the top, and use my Eagle Vision to scope out a good place to get lunch. Then, I jumped into a bale of hay and stabbed a dude selling pots because he looked at me funny. No, no, no, I took the steps. It was awesome though. 436 steps to the top, but when you're about halfway you get to stop and look down into the church see the paintings on the ceiling. The people inside the church looked like ants...and we were inside. It was crazy. I'm still afraid of heights...I know its pretty lame, but so is Brian, so we were both starting to get dizzy. We walked the rest of the way up- sometimes the stairs were spiraling, and sometimes they were ridiculously steep going straight up. We finally made it outside to the top, and the view was outrageous. You could see everything in the entire city. There were hills to our left and right, with really nice houses scattered throughout. You could see down to the Arno River, which cuts right through the city, and in the distance, miles and miles away, you could see a giant snowcapped mountain. I have a picture of it on facebook, but it's hard to make out. It looks like a white dot among the hills, but in person it was much clearer. The weather at this point was great, too, even though it was freeezing in the morning and I decided to believe the weatherman and wear shorts. I could have stayed up there for the rest of the day, but we had a reservation to see Michelangelo's David sculpture at the Accademia at 1. We basically ran down the stairs and made it on time to use our reservations to skip the long line that was snaking around the building...there was no line I just made that up, and we got made fun of by the security guard for making reservations in the off-season. I'm just going to preface this by saying that I really am not into art, and it's never been a big priority of mine, but after seeing all the famous sculptures and paintings over here, I'm finally starting to understand why people are so fascinated by it. Granted, I'll still be spending my Sunday afternoons watching da Iggles instead of going to the art museum when I get back, but while I'm here its good to take in all the aspects of the culture. The David is anatomically perfect, down to the veins in his hands and neck, the flex of the hamstrings, and the posture of the body. It is also HUGE. I seriously don't understand how Michelangelo created something so perfect out of a block of marble. We stayed in the Accademia for about an hour, but really looking at the David for about 45 minutes. To be honest, it wasn't even worth seeing the other sculptures in the museum, because after just having seen the David, everything else looked so much worse. We left the museum, and at that point we were starving. We headed to a little restaurant, where we ordered some liver as an appetizer, which wasn't bad, but not great either. I tried it just for the sake of trying it. I got some awesome pasta there as well, and Nick, Brian, and I headed across the street and got some gelatto, because Florence is famous for doing their gelatto a little differently than the rest of Italy. It was good, just like all the food here. I'm convinced that there's no bad food in Italy. After that, we went to the Uffizi museum. I wasn't able to really appreciate it because, like I said, I'm not really that into art. I did recognize a few paintings though, which are really world famous, like "Birth of Venus," "La Primavera (Springtime)," and one that I didn't recognize, but was painted by Da Vinci. Firenze is the home of the Renaissance, the rebirth of culture and knowledge in the middle ages. Even though it was difficult me to appreciate the artistic value of the paintings, I could appreciate their historic significance, so the Uffizi was really cool. Also, there was a cool terrace that gave you a pretty decent view of the center of town, and there was a spectacular view of the river below from inside the museum. After the Uffizi, running on 3-4 hours of sleep, I was beat. We stopped by the Duomo one last time so Brian and Nick could meet their friend, and I left for the train station. There was a communist rally going on right outside the train station, which got me pretty nervous since I was wearing a football shirt with English writing, but the police had them pretty well roped off. I bit the bullet and paid 24 euro for a fast train, which was fine since I had only paid 6 euro for my train into the city. It cut the time in half. It was an amazing day, and the first time I'd left Bologna since I've gotten here. All in all, Florence is just a fantastic place, and I'd be hard-pressed to name another city with more cultural significance in the world, although you could name places like Paris, Rome, Athens, etc. The city was absolutely beautiful. One thing that I did find to be both a positive and negative about the city though, was its strong American presence. We found a place that served freaking cheesesteaks, and I was really tempted just to try it, like I tried McDonald's earlier. I didn't though because I didn't want anything to make me mad in Florence. For me, Florence is a great place to visit, but I'm not so sure I'd want to live there. In Bologna, I'm not saying it's impossible to see Americans, but its pretty rare and when you do meet one it's a big deal. In Florence, Americans were everywhere. So for a day visit, that made it incredibly easy to get around and see everything we wanted to. But, I feel like it would be pretty easy to just get by there without immersing yourself in the culture and trying to learn the language, which for me is why I came to Italy in the first place. Is it prettier than Bologna? Absolutely, and there's so much to see. When Americans romanticize Italy, Florence is exactly the type of place they're thinking of. I can see why Tuscany is so famous- but with that comes a lot of tourism, which in turn affects the culture of the city. By no means is Bologna's culture unadulterated, in fact its quite the opposite, with foreign students traveling here for 1,000 years to study. I guess the point I'm making here is that you can have the experience in Florence and learn the language and all, but it takes less of an effort to do that in Bologna because you're constantly forced into unfamiliar situations. Regardless, it was a great day, the most beautiful city I've ever seen, and I can't wait to see what else Europe and Italy have in store for me. I'm rootin for the Pack tonight by the way. Prediction GB 24-17