2016-07-29 Rome to Florence
Today we woke up early and got ready to go as quickly as possible. We left Rome feeling as if we didn’t see everything we wanted to see. We got into the taxi and went to the train station. We found out that our train was at 9:20, not 9:02. When we left we saw a dome-like ruin that was being restored, who knows what secret it holds? We also found out that there wasn’t any security to go through, unlike the description we heard and prepared for. It made me feel like we could have slept in longer. We got on the train and went to Florence. My mom checked my math while I slept. Then I fixed the math that my mom checked. After about an hour we arrived at our destination.
We got into a taxi and went to our hotel, Hotel Pendini. Our room was still occupied so we had to go outside and wait. We decided to take a walk around the city and check things out. We first decided to go check out the hotel instead. We found the breakfast room and tea room. Both rooms were the most antique I had ever seen.
This place was made to either look very antique or is antique either way, I couldn’t wait to see our room.
We then walked outside, and found out that our breakfast room was the very arch that Hitler and Mussolini marched under.
We then walked to the Duomo, which means cathedral. It was very colorful and a little overwhelming for my eyes. In my opinion it looked like a church in its fiesta pajamas.
We also saw a small church in front of it, I really wanted to go in, but since it costs money (and a very long line in hot sun), we decided to continue on our way to the Mercat Central to try the food there. As we walked there I saw many restaurants and took note of their location for later. I also saw a market selling a huge amount of leather, and even though my mom wanted to not buy any souvenirs on our world trip, she was still checking out the leather work. When we finally left the leather street market, a leather smith was waiting for us after lunch.
When we entered the market we saw many restaurants and a few meat shops. We walked around and found a restaurant that made the noodles and sauce for you on the spot.
It was very good, my mom and I shared pasta, while my dad had pesto sauce with ravioli.
The food was really good, but not enough so we went upstairs to try the seafood. we ordered seafood platter and it was great, there was shrimp (my personal favorite), squid, sardines, and these small circular calamari.
2016-07-30 Florence
Today we woke up and rushed to the breakfast room, we rushed because we wanted to go a good spot in the line for the Academia Museum, a private collection that has the famous Michelangelo, David. The owners of this private collection are the Medici family, a family that had funded people like Michelangelo to do works like this. The Medici family had a ton of villas all around the world…
When we got in (this is a small museum) we went straight to the David. He looked very confident when I looked at him from the front. We then walked counterclockwise to when he seemed to be looking above us, he now looked as if he was very nervous and troubled about his enemy, Goliath. When we walked around to the back I was struck by surprise at how long his sling was it went diagonally from his left hand all the way down to his waist where the right hand was.
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After seeing this event we went back to see the other things. There were four unfinished sculptures leading up to the hall, the first one on the right was called “The Young Slave” he had one arm covering his face, while the other arm was by his side. The one on the right is called “The Awakening Slave”, it had mainly the torso part of the body, one arm about to stretch and the other already stretching. I then walked down the hall a little more, there was one on the right and one on the left. The one on the right looked like a bearded man carrying something the statue’s name was “The Bearded Slave” pretty creative names so far huh? On the left there is a sculpture with everything completed, but its head. Finally, this name is interesting “Atlas” this was named after a Greek legend in which a good Titan named Atlas has to hold up the sky, but to me this guy’s position looks like he is trying to get some helmet or something off his head.
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We saw some more minor Michelangelo’s (okay not minor, but pretty small), and lots of music instruments.
An Earlier Piano
We then walked to a church that had two different architectural styles. The facade was a Renaissance style. While the interior was Gothic.
The painting of Trinity was one of the first paintings that had mastered perspectives.
There was also a pulpit where Galileo was denounced for stating the earth was not the center of the universe.
This made me really freaked out. For Florence literally started the Renaissance, and this was the very beginning of the Enlightenment.
This was getting kind of crazy, because later I found out that the first greatest sculptor of the Renaissance, Donatello, had been involved in the story of the crucifix that was on the left of the main altar. The story was that Donatello had created a crucifix for a church and his friend Filippo Brunelleschi said that Donatello had put a peasant on the cross. This made Donatello really frustrated, and he said “If you think you can do better, go ahead.” So Filippo went to work. Finally on day Filippo invited Donatello to his house. Filippo waited downstairs while Donatello got the food. When Donatello walked into the room he saw the statue and dropped the food while saying, “OK you’ll carve Jesus and I’ll carve peasants.” This was pretty funny. I couldn’t believe that Donatello had lost an art contest to a person who was not famous at all for his statues, in fact he was the architect of the famous Dumo.
We then walks to the market to have lunch, I mostly wanted to go there for some time to play the free piano there and for the pasta and shrimp in the seafood dish.
After lunch and a few piano songs we were going to go to the bridge that crossed the river. When we were walking I started collecting pictures of funny street signs.
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We walked to the only Medieval bridge that survived World War II, Ponte Vecchio.
This was the only bridge standing because when the Germans retreated, the commander was told to blow up every bridge to make the river uncross-able. But the commander had mercy on this one bridge. So to make the bridge uncross-able he destroyed all the towers and walls nearby. When we finally reached the bridge I saw two boats that were propelled not by wind, not by motor, but by a pole pushing off the bottom. Overall the bridge was beautiful, but the jewelry shops had a bad effect.
There was a great view of the riverside houses, the houses, like in Girona, hung over the river.
2016-07-31 Florence
Today we walked across the Ponte Vecchio bridge to see the Medici Fort across the river. We walked to the fort and found out it was closed, so we walked to a nearby garden, but the garden costs money so we didn’t go there. The Fort was free, but won’t open for another 30 minutes. So we took a walk around, when we walked around We saw an old wall that had holes in it, I thought that this was very interesting since some holes were skinny while others weren’t. Somehow we started talking about the golden ratio, and its origins.
After a while we walked back and got into the fort. This fort was owned by the Medici family and had a private path from the palace to the fort. When we walked in I was very surprised. The upper roof seemed to be all leisure and no defense. But later I found out that the main entrance was heavily guarded. There were two crossbow compartments both had three holes, two facing forward and one slanted.
There was also a huge group of golden heads, all of which had some kind of horn. It was pretty cool. We also saw a Golden laughing person, I later found out that he was laughing because water was coming out of his pants. After checking out the cafe on top, we also went into a small exhibit showing silicon bronze swords, and helmets, I think that the golden statues outside were also silicon bronze.
We walked over the river and went to a pizzeria called Mangia this place had many good reviews on trip adviser, so we decided to try it out. We walked there and found out that it was closed for another 30 minutes, we walked around and then came back. We ate an awesome lunch of cheese pizza, spicy pizza, and spicy salami. What was interesting was that the cheese was put on then the tomato was put on, which made it looked very disgusting, even though it tasted great.
We then walked down to the Uffizi Museum where we have a reservation at 1. My mom said that it would take about 10 minutes to walk, but it was really funny because we turned the corner and found out that it was right there. We entered the museum (make sure you are in the correct line) and immediately walked up all the flights of stairs, because we were told to do that in an audio guide we listened to the night before. Here we saw the famous Birth of Venus.
When we walked into the first room we saw many old paintings from the Dark Ages. These paintings were very interesting, there wasn’t any perspective and the faces seemed to stand out from the body as if they were photo-shopped into the picture. The only painting I saw that had perspective was still very Gothic. We then walked into the next room, this room was supposed to be paintings from the “Early Renaissance”, but they seemed to be still Gothic style rather than Renaissance. I think that this was more of a transition time than a early time of the Renaissance.
We walked into the other room and I was really surprised, the paintings had went back to the Gothic style this was very interesting, their wasn’t anything about so we continued on. We saw some more rooms, and many Madonnas (Mary, the mother of Jesus)
That pizza from Mangia was excellent. We need to remember this place for our next visit 🙂
http://www.mangiapizzafirenze.it/
I love reading your detailed descriptions of the architecture, art, and food, Jeremy! You will be so happy to have these in the future! I can’t wait to see more of your sketches!
Love,
Aunt Carol