Italy Spring Break IV: "I Think All My Hiking Was Training for Dome Climbing"

FLORENCE
Our train arrived around 6:30 which was perfect because it meant we still had daylight to try and find our hostel.  I loved Florence at first site.  It is a much smaller city and felt more homey.  The streets were full of little shops and people as we walked from the train station.  The hostel was amazing as well.  The people were so nice and helpful that it made me sad we had only budgeted one day in Florence!!!  The concierge suggested this place called ZaZa for dinner.  We didn't really have a place in mind so we went to check it out and eventually chose it for dinner.  That was the perfect choice.

We had great food and sat outside on their heated deck and had good wine, bread, gnocchi, rigatoni, and steak.  Florence had begun with a wonderful evening.

The next morning we started off early with the Duomo!

 The outside is covered in a variety of green, pink, and white marble designs while the inside is fairly simple.  Apparently this was due to the fact that the construction of the Duomo was funded by the commune and not the Catholic church.

It was still an astounding sight.  Especially the dome, which was covered in frescoes.

I wanted a closer look so.....we climbed up into the dome!

 The dome was painted such that the top was Heaven, the middle was Earth/Purgatory, and the bottom was Hell.  It is a very popular theme to structure domes this way.  This "levels of importance" pattern is even seen in Muslim domes where they have 7 level domes representing the 7 levels of heaven.

The bottom hell portion had some pretty graphic demon and destruction parts to it, but my favorite was a skeleton reaper on, what I considered to be, the Earth portion.

The view from the top of the dome was also beautiful.  Florence is very much white buildings and red roofs which made it appear all the more quaint!

From the Duomo we took a break, got some Gelato and then some lunch.  That's right.  Gelato first.  So for lunch we just found this little hole in the wall panini place that was pretty cheap.  Those panini may have been the best things I've ever eaten!

We bought three: one each and then one to share.  I got sun dried tomato and goat cheese, Matt got prosciutto and some sort of sauce, and the third had Italian salami and goat cheese spread.  I will probably dream of these panini forever.  They were AMAZING.  I told Matt that I would end up building them up so much in my mind that when ever we return they will never live up to my standards....

From lunch we had a reservation at the Galleria dell'Accademia which houses the David, another work of Michelangelo.  He carved this statue out of one block of marble when he was 29.  It is stunning.  The eyes are especially interesting because in order to give the appearance of light hitting the eye, the pupils are heart-shaped.  Sadly I have to pilfer more photos from the internet as no photo taking was allowed and sneaky photos weren't possible either.

 The statue is just breathtaking.  It stands around 17ft and appears to be flawless.

 Here you can see the heart-shaped pupils.  I really love the effect it has on his eyes and the whole expression.

 The work is so detailed that you can even see the individual veins on his hands, wrinkles in his knuckles, and tendons under his skin.

From the Galleria dell'Accademia we were supposed to immediately go to the Galleria degli Uffizi but we had a little extra time so we stopped by a church first.

 This church held the tombs of Galileo, Machiavelli, and a memorial to Leonardo Da Vinci who was born in Florence.

Tomb of Galileo

 Galileo's bust is appropriately posed with a telescope in hand.

Finally Machiavelli's tomb!

From this church we went to our reservation at Galleria degli Uffizi.  All art lovers will be very disappointed because Matt and I were so tired that we kind of zombie walked through the museum.  We did see the famous Botticelli works like the Birth of Venus and Primavera (Spring), but we really brushed over a lot of the gallery...we're not big art people and we were really tired...

For dinner we went to an amazing Focaccia bread bar where they had fresh Focaccia made on site used for panini.  It was a lovely dinner and our waiter was fantastic!  He was fluent in English, loved the Red Sox (I think he'd lived in Boston for a bit), and loved metal music from the 70's and 80's.  He and Matt had a long conversation about the up coming baseball season and song lyrics and their relation to literature.  He was a riot!  After that amazing dinner we unfortunately had to say goodbye to Florence and continue on to Venice.  It was a truly fantastic day.