Guten Tag from Munich! I swear this is my last update from this place!
After leaving Cinque Terra, I went to Florence. Florence is the capital of Tuscany with quite a bit to offer, but also has a small town feel to it given that it's population is only about 400,000 people. There's plenty of intriguing stores and shopping areas in the city. The Ponte Vecchio, Florence's famous bridge, is home to the town's jewelers and gold dealers. In addition to shopping, Florentines love their food, wine (especially Chianti), and art. I hit up two popular tourist sites while there.
The Duomo Santa Maria, a huge cathedral in the middle of the city, is an impressive building. The Duomo, built between 1296 and 1436, was the first domed structure built in Europe since Roman times. The exterior is adorned with marble and absolutely dominates the skyline from many parts of the city. Strangely enough, the interior was pretty drab. Maybe I'm just used to walking into cathedrals and being blown away by the austentacious decorations, that when I go to a place without gold everywhere I feel unimpressed.
The Academy Gallery was originally founded as an art school, but currently it houses a museum with many statues, paintings, and even musical instruments. The main reason people go to the Academy though is to see the world's most famous statue; Michelangelo's David. I had read and heard a lot about the statue and how "perfect" and true to human form it is, but I was absolutely blown away by the scale of it and it's perfection. It's truly a flawless marble human being. Other than the David, the museum was kind of boring, but there were two other sections I enjoyed. One was a history in music during roughly a 100 year time period in Florence. There were a bunch of old instruments on display (restored and original pieces), an audio interface where the user could sample certain musical selections from the time period, and an interactive display that showed the differences between a piano and a harpsichord (piano strings are hit with a hammer versus harpsichord strings which are plucked). The other section I enjoyed was about storyboards. Painters used to paint long storyboard pieces that told mythological or Biblical stories when you looked at the painting. It was fun looking at the boards, coming up with my own interpretation, then reading about them to see how close I was.
There are many other sites to see in Florence, the Uffizi Gallery is extremely popular, but I really only had time for a few things and I'm kind of museumed out at this point.
Also in Florence, my friend Brad and I picked the hostel we did because they supposedly had good wifi. This was important because we really wanted to watch the Bedlam football game. It didn't turn out well, but since the game didn't come on until 2 am, it was pretty fun trying to figure out ways to occupy our time until it started. Luckily there was a Playstation 2, so we spent a significant amount of time racing and playing tennis. I went through a 1.5 liter of Coke to keep myself awake until it ended just before 6 am. Pretty sure everyone else at the hostel was really confused about what we were doing. Fun experience despite the outcome of the game that we'll be able to talk about for years to come.
After Florence, I had every intention of going to Venice, but it was pouring down rain the day I was supposed to go, and Venice turns into a swamp when it rains, so I decided to postpone that idea. Next trip!
Ching Ching!
No comments:
Post a Comment