Florence
After writing such long posts about Rome I needed a break before writing about Florence and Venice. But, I'm finally getting to it so here is the story of Florence and Venice will come later today or tomorrow.
We left for Florence Saturday morning. We took the train from Rome to Florence, which was largely uneventful, mostly boring but it gave us time to read up on what we wanted to see in Florence besides the Uffizi, which is the big museum there. Saturday we didn't see much, walked around the city a little bit to get used to our new surroundings, took a few pictures of what we did see. The one notable thing that we saw was David, at the Galleria Accademia, among a few lesser known pieces of art, mostly icons. It was really cool though, bigger than I expected. For some reason I didn't think it was gigantic, but it was. It's interesting though (and funny) because they have benches that you can sit on, only the benches are right behind David, so you're looking up at his butt. Poor planning on someone's part, otherwise they thought it would make a good joke which it does. Besides that we didn't do much, ate a pretty good supper at a nice restaurant, and had some wine since we were in Tuscany. It was pretty good wine, and we ended up buying a bottle (not at the restaurant, which would have been way more expensive) to bring home as a souvenir.
The next day was our busiest and most enjoyable day in Florence. We started with the Uffizi Museum early in the day to avoid the "crowds" although nothing was really busy on our trip since January isn't exactly peak tourist time, which worked out well for us. The Uffizi started as the Medici art collection, and most of the pieces in it were at one point owned by the Medici family (Florence was the home of the Medici family). They owned some really famous pieces of art, and the museum has the Birth of Venus (Boticelli) as well as another painting that I really liked by now can't remember the name. It has Venus in it, and some nymphs, and some other people, but I can't remember it. Maybe someone knows what I'm talking about? It's also by Boticelli, and I really liked it. There are some things in the museum that have been added to it, that weren't the collection of the Medici's, but it was so cool to walk through and know that they owned so many of the things that we saw. It took us a few hours to get through the museum, and they had a couple of rooms closed so we didn't even get to see everything.
After the museum we thought we would check out the Palazzo Vecchio which is the Medici family's first home (they eventually moved to the Palazzo Pitti, after the city apparantly got too crowded for them and they wanted a bigger place with land...) and right by the Uffizi. Well, you had to pay an arm and a leg to get in, so we took a couple pics of what we could see and then decided we would rather check out the Palazzo Pitti instead since it had the Boboli Gardens which I wanted to check out. We are so happy we made that decision, as the Boboli Gardens ended up being one of our favorite places on our trip. First though, before that, we went to the Ponte Vecchio, which is Florence's first bridge, and has some of the nicest and most expensive jewelry shops on it. We got some gelato and hung out on the bridge for a bit, took some pictures of the river, then crossed over to the other, less busy part of Florence where the Palazzo Pitti (or the Pitti Palace in English) is. We thought we would check out both the Palace and the Boboli Gardens, but the admission is different for each, two separate admissions for the Palace and for the Gardens. The Gardens also included the porecelain gallery and the costume gallery, both of which I wanted to see, and it would have been really expensive to do both, and time-consuming, so even though it would have been fun to see the inside of the palace we chose just to do the gardens and the galleries that went with it. Like I said, it was probably our favorite thing in Florence. The weather was really nice for it, the day started out gray but ended up sunny, so everything was really pretty. The Palace has a fountain right when you walk through the entrance, as well as at least 3 other fountains/ponds in the gardens. We walked up the main path, right behind the palace, which had what looked like stands and what I later discovered actually were stands for audiences to watch lawn games and sports and the like apparantly. We took some pictures by the fountain at the middle of the hill, and then walked up the rest of the way to take some more pictures and go to the porcelain gallery. By this point we were way up above the city, only we were overlooking the countryside and not the city, so we got to see how beautiful the Italian landscape was. As to the porcelain gallery, wow. Amazing. I would love to have china like that. No kidding, beautiful. It was amazing to see the differences in patterns and how fancy some of them were.
After we left the porcelain gallery we headed back downhill a little bit to discover the rest of the gardens. We had a basic map, so we knew we had a lot to cover still. The rest was even more amazing than the first part, or at least equally so. There were so many paths to go down and little courtyard like areas, some had fountain, some had benches, some were just open spaces, some had statues. At the top of the hill (sortof parallel to where the fountain at the middle of the hill in the main path that's right outside the palace itself) is a courtyard with a weird statue of a face, it's really cool and apparantly it's been a part of the gardens for a long time, I think it was owned and kept there by the Medici family, but it doesn't really seem to fit the rest of their garden decor. I mean, they have all of these Roman statues and their fountains are either Roman styles or very old-fashioned, but this head is so huge it seems out of place. From the courtyard another large path goes downhill (perpendicular to the "main path") to what we think was their "main" pond, it's bigger and there are benches all around it, plus a courtyard like areas at the bottom of the hill as well. Although, there are courtyards all over it, so who knows. We just couldn't imagine, after walking back up the hill on our way back to the palace, having parties down there even though it seemed like they would use it for that because it was so big, but the hill was really tiring and long. Maybe we are more out of shape than they were, but really, can you imagine the richest, wealthiest people tiring themselves out at a party to walk up a hill? I don't think so.
Anyway, we didn't walk straight down the hill to the pond, instead we just wandered down slowly, taking paths off to the side, following them as we wanted and then coming back down them only to find new ones and take those where they led. We discovered that on both sides of that large path, and parallel to it, were smaller paths with trees on both sides that created a cover, and they were really quiet and pretty and romantic, so we took a few pictures. We were even able to get a few of us by setting our camera on the ground. I wish we would have had a tripod, not just for that time but others, but we managed to get some of us without it. We also discovered many other paths, and a bird bathing in a fountain that was at the side of a path. The fountain spilled down into little half tubes carved in the marble and ran through them until it spilled down into the next one. There's a picture of the bird on facebook I think so maybe you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. There was also a cat chilling around. We also saw the costume gallery, which was cool but not as cool as the porcelain gallery because there wasn't as much as I thought there would be. It was still fun to see all the fancy clothes they would wear.
The whole time we were at the Boboli Gardens we felt like we could have been at a fancy party like you see in movies, where they just stand on the lawns and drink champagne in their huge old beautiful dresses. If you've ever seen the Patriot or the Count of Monte Cristo you should have an idea of what I mean. It was also very romantic, walking on some of the paths with no one around. There were multiple people in the gardens, they were just so huge that we hardly ever saw them. Plus, we explored a lot so I'm not even sure how many people walk around in there as much as we did. We spent the whole afternoon there! It was just a gorgeous place to spend an afternoon and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
The next day was our last day in Florence, and we only had a few things we wanted to see. We went to the Duomo, the big church in Florence, which is gorgeous on the outside but a little plain on the inside. Seriously though, the outside is very intricately and beautifully designed, and looks really good. I think part of the reason the inside is a little more plain is that a lot of what used to be in the Duomo is now in the Museo del Opera, which is basically the museum of the Duomo. That was better than the Duomo because while the Duomo is amazing on the outside, the museum has a lot more in it, including Michelangelo's unfinished Pieta. The Pieta isn't just Jesus and Mary, it's also Nicodemus, who was carved in the image of Michelangelo, and Mary Magdalene, who was actually added in later by a student. Anyway, this Pieta has a funny story with it too. It's unfinished because the marble had too many imperfections. Well, the imperfections ticked Michelangelo offed so much that he chucked his chisel and the statue and broke off one of Jesus' arms and one of his legs. No kidding. The arm was restored, but to this today Jesus does not have a left leg. I can attest to the truth of that.
Besides the Duomo and the museum, we really only wanted to go up the hill (Florence has a lot of hills) on the other side of the river (not by the Pitti Palace) to a church called San Miniato, a little bit past Piazzale Michelangelo, which has a 2nd statue of David. I wanted to go to the church because I had read they still have monks that do Gregorian chants in the afternoon. So we went in the afternoon up to P. Michelangelo, to see the other David, which is in terrible condition due to weather and wear and tear, but the Piazzale has a great view of the city so we took some pictures, and Eric got worried that the storm clouds that we saw over the hills were going to hit us, but we only got a small amount of rain so it wasn't a big deal. Then we went to the church, which has an amazingly large cemetery. It was both cool and depressing at the same time. There are some famous Italians buried there, like the author of Pinocchio, and apparantly it's a famous cemetery that a lot of people want to be buried in. Plus of course, people from the Benedictine order that lives there have been buried over the years. One of the saddest things was a tomb of a man and woman who were obviously husband and wife and who died during WWII, when they were still really young. There was a statue of them on top of the grave. We didn't get to hear any Gregorian chants, even though we were there about an hour, so maybe we just missed it or maybe our guidebook was wrong, but I'm still really happy we went.
That's basically our time in Florence! We bought a few souvenirs, such as our wine and some olive oil and some other small items, and just enjoyed our time eating food from another region and walking around seeing what there was to see. I'm really glad we went a little bit outside of the city where it was slightly less touristy and which had a really good view of both the city of Florence and the surrounding "countryside." Florence is in a really beautiful area and I can see why so many people choose to travel there! We loved it as we did the rest of our trip.
We left for Florence Saturday morning. We took the train from Rome to Florence, which was largely uneventful, mostly boring but it gave us time to read up on what we wanted to see in Florence besides the Uffizi, which is the big museum there. Saturday we didn't see much, walked around the city a little bit to get used to our new surroundings, took a few pictures of what we did see. The one notable thing that we saw was David, at the Galleria Accademia, among a few lesser known pieces of art, mostly icons. It was really cool though, bigger than I expected. For some reason I didn't think it was gigantic, but it was. It's interesting though (and funny) because they have benches that you can sit on, only the benches are right behind David, so you're looking up at his butt. Poor planning on someone's part, otherwise they thought it would make a good joke which it does. Besides that we didn't do much, ate a pretty good supper at a nice restaurant, and had some wine since we were in Tuscany. It was pretty good wine, and we ended up buying a bottle (not at the restaurant, which would have been way more expensive) to bring home as a souvenir.
The next day was our busiest and most enjoyable day in Florence. We started with the Uffizi Museum early in the day to avoid the "crowds" although nothing was really busy on our trip since January isn't exactly peak tourist time, which worked out well for us. The Uffizi started as the Medici art collection, and most of the pieces in it were at one point owned by the Medici family (Florence was the home of the Medici family). They owned some really famous pieces of art, and the museum has the Birth of Venus (Boticelli) as well as another painting that I really liked by now can't remember the name. It has Venus in it, and some nymphs, and some other people, but I can't remember it. Maybe someone knows what I'm talking about? It's also by Boticelli, and I really liked it. There are some things in the museum that have been added to it, that weren't the collection of the Medici's, but it was so cool to walk through and know that they owned so many of the things that we saw. It took us a few hours to get through the museum, and they had a couple of rooms closed so we didn't even get to see everything.
After the museum we thought we would check out the Palazzo Vecchio which is the Medici family's first home (they eventually moved to the Palazzo Pitti, after the city apparantly got too crowded for them and they wanted a bigger place with land...) and right by the Uffizi. Well, you had to pay an arm and a leg to get in, so we took a couple pics of what we could see and then decided we would rather check out the Palazzo Pitti instead since it had the Boboli Gardens which I wanted to check out. We are so happy we made that decision, as the Boboli Gardens ended up being one of our favorite places on our trip. First though, before that, we went to the Ponte Vecchio, which is Florence's first bridge, and has some of the nicest and most expensive jewelry shops on it. We got some gelato and hung out on the bridge for a bit, took some pictures of the river, then crossed over to the other, less busy part of Florence where the Palazzo Pitti (or the Pitti Palace in English) is. We thought we would check out both the Palace and the Boboli Gardens, but the admission is different for each, two separate admissions for the Palace and for the Gardens. The Gardens also included the porecelain gallery and the costume gallery, both of which I wanted to see, and it would have been really expensive to do both, and time-consuming, so even though it would have been fun to see the inside of the palace we chose just to do the gardens and the galleries that went with it. Like I said, it was probably our favorite thing in Florence. The weather was really nice for it, the day started out gray but ended up sunny, so everything was really pretty. The Palace has a fountain right when you walk through the entrance, as well as at least 3 other fountains/ponds in the gardens. We walked up the main path, right behind the palace, which had what looked like stands and what I later discovered actually were stands for audiences to watch lawn games and sports and the like apparantly. We took some pictures by the fountain at the middle of the hill, and then walked up the rest of the way to take some more pictures and go to the porcelain gallery. By this point we were way up above the city, only we were overlooking the countryside and not the city, so we got to see how beautiful the Italian landscape was. As to the porcelain gallery, wow. Amazing. I would love to have china like that. No kidding, beautiful. It was amazing to see the differences in patterns and how fancy some of them were.
After we left the porcelain gallery we headed back downhill a little bit to discover the rest of the gardens. We had a basic map, so we knew we had a lot to cover still. The rest was even more amazing than the first part, or at least equally so. There were so many paths to go down and little courtyard like areas, some had fountain, some had benches, some were just open spaces, some had statues. At the top of the hill (sortof parallel to where the fountain at the middle of the hill in the main path that's right outside the palace itself) is a courtyard with a weird statue of a face, it's really cool and apparantly it's been a part of the gardens for a long time, I think it was owned and kept there by the Medici family, but it doesn't really seem to fit the rest of their garden decor. I mean, they have all of these Roman statues and their fountains are either Roman styles or very old-fashioned, but this head is so huge it seems out of place. From the courtyard another large path goes downhill (perpendicular to the "main path") to what we think was their "main" pond, it's bigger and there are benches all around it, plus a courtyard like areas at the bottom of the hill as well. Although, there are courtyards all over it, so who knows. We just couldn't imagine, after walking back up the hill on our way back to the palace, having parties down there even though it seemed like they would use it for that because it was so big, but the hill was really tiring and long. Maybe we are more out of shape than they were, but really, can you imagine the richest, wealthiest people tiring themselves out at a party to walk up a hill? I don't think so.
Anyway, we didn't walk straight down the hill to the pond, instead we just wandered down slowly, taking paths off to the side, following them as we wanted and then coming back down them only to find new ones and take those where they led. We discovered that on both sides of that large path, and parallel to it, were smaller paths with trees on both sides that created a cover, and they were really quiet and pretty and romantic, so we took a few pictures. We were even able to get a few of us by setting our camera on the ground. I wish we would have had a tripod, not just for that time but others, but we managed to get some of us without it. We also discovered many other paths, and a bird bathing in a fountain that was at the side of a path. The fountain spilled down into little half tubes carved in the marble and ran through them until it spilled down into the next one. There's a picture of the bird on facebook I think so maybe you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. There was also a cat chilling around. We also saw the costume gallery, which was cool but not as cool as the porcelain gallery because there wasn't as much as I thought there would be. It was still fun to see all the fancy clothes they would wear.
The whole time we were at the Boboli Gardens we felt like we could have been at a fancy party like you see in movies, where they just stand on the lawns and drink champagne in their huge old beautiful dresses. If you've ever seen the Patriot or the Count of Monte Cristo you should have an idea of what I mean. It was also very romantic, walking on some of the paths with no one around. There were multiple people in the gardens, they were just so huge that we hardly ever saw them. Plus, we explored a lot so I'm not even sure how many people walk around in there as much as we did. We spent the whole afternoon there! It was just a gorgeous place to spend an afternoon and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
The next day was our last day in Florence, and we only had a few things we wanted to see. We went to the Duomo, the big church in Florence, which is gorgeous on the outside but a little plain on the inside. Seriously though, the outside is very intricately and beautifully designed, and looks really good. I think part of the reason the inside is a little more plain is that a lot of what used to be in the Duomo is now in the Museo del Opera, which is basically the museum of the Duomo. That was better than the Duomo because while the Duomo is amazing on the outside, the museum has a lot more in it, including Michelangelo's unfinished Pieta. The Pieta isn't just Jesus and Mary, it's also Nicodemus, who was carved in the image of Michelangelo, and Mary Magdalene, who was actually added in later by a student. Anyway, this Pieta has a funny story with it too. It's unfinished because the marble had too many imperfections. Well, the imperfections ticked Michelangelo offed so much that he chucked his chisel and the statue and broke off one of Jesus' arms and one of his legs. No kidding. The arm was restored, but to this today Jesus does not have a left leg. I can attest to the truth of that.
Besides the Duomo and the museum, we really only wanted to go up the hill (Florence has a lot of hills) on the other side of the river (not by the Pitti Palace) to a church called San Miniato, a little bit past Piazzale Michelangelo, which has a 2nd statue of David. I wanted to go to the church because I had read they still have monks that do Gregorian chants in the afternoon. So we went in the afternoon up to P. Michelangelo, to see the other David, which is in terrible condition due to weather and wear and tear, but the Piazzale has a great view of the city so we took some pictures, and Eric got worried that the storm clouds that we saw over the hills were going to hit us, but we only got a small amount of rain so it wasn't a big deal. Then we went to the church, which has an amazingly large cemetery. It was both cool and depressing at the same time. There are some famous Italians buried there, like the author of Pinocchio, and apparantly it's a famous cemetery that a lot of people want to be buried in. Plus of course, people from the Benedictine order that lives there have been buried over the years. One of the saddest things was a tomb of a man and woman who were obviously husband and wife and who died during WWII, when they were still really young. There was a statue of them on top of the grave. We didn't get to hear any Gregorian chants, even though we were there about an hour, so maybe we just missed it or maybe our guidebook was wrong, but I'm still really happy we went.
That's basically our time in Florence! We bought a few souvenirs, such as our wine and some olive oil and some other small items, and just enjoyed our time eating food from another region and walking around seeing what there was to see. I'm really glad we went a little bit outside of the city where it was slightly less touristy and which had a really good view of both the city of Florence and the surrounding "countryside." Florence is in a really beautiful area and I can see why so many people choose to travel there! We loved it as we did the rest of our trip.
posted by empeterson @ 11:57 AM
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