Frolicking in Firenze

St. Patty's day weekend, instead of heading to the homeland of Ireland I went and visited Florence, Italy! St. Patrick's day is not as big here in Europe as it is back home but none the less I think I had a more interesting week and weekend combination than I have had thus far.

 Florence was absolutely beautiful, although it was a little chillier than in Rome it was still nice to walk around in. The most famous thing that Florence is probably known for is its Duomo. The Duomo can be seen from miles around if you are at a high point outside of the city and construction first began in 1296 and was structurally completed in 1436 and was engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi. The church is known as Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore where the dome was the largest in the world until the development of new structural materials. It remains the largest brick dome ever built.

 This is the church has the most ornate outside that I have ever seen. Most of a church's beautiful things are placed on the inside because of the fact that Christians did not want to be sort of 'Show offs', where as the Romans before they all turned to Christianity made their buildings structurally ornate on the outside rather than the inside to show people how great they truly were. Something that has to be done when visiting this is to climb up to the top of the duomo and see the view of the entire city of Florence and the Tuscan landscape. But first what else had to be seen was the inside of the church and its fantastic ceiling.

Inside the church

 At first glance, when entering into the ground floor of the church the outside to me was definitely the most intricate part. Until you walk up to the altar area and take a good look at the ceiling.

Mosaics were so pretty

 The ceiling was painted by Giorgio Vasari and it is the masterpiece that resides inside of the church and is the most colorful aspect on the inside. Other painters/sculptors such as Michelangelo and Leonardo are said to have helped with the process of finishing this church in ways of giving advice and designing either the stained glass or other features as well. 

The fresco on the ceiling

Symbol of St. Francis adorns the doors

Steps up to the top

 The next thing to do was climb up to the top of the Duomo to get a beautiful view of Florence and its surrounding landscape. The challenge was to walk up 463 steps to get to the top. The steps were not too bad but they would not necessarily pass a safety inspection in the U.S. This weekend I definitely got my work out in, over the entire weekend we walked at least 7 miles, with over 1500 stairs combined for the entire weekend. Saying my legs were sore is a bit of an understatement! But of course all of the walking was completely worth it. As you will see in upcoming pictures, the views were just fantastic.

A view of the ground floor from up in the dome

A closer view of the ceiling

 The view was so extensive that most of the pictures turned out amazingly and it is hard to even capture the beauty of Tuscany with a camera because words just are unable to describe it. If I were to put down in words what this view and place was like the word I would choose would be enamoring. As the pictures will hopefully show how not much has changed in the past 600 + years. This city is more a work of art than a huge metropolis, it is also deceiving that this is truly a city. There are no buildings taller than the Duomo and no skyscrapers. Probably because there was physically no room for any! I have noticed that most cities in Europe are huge and extensive yet they lack skyscrapers - something I really enjoy because the cities character is defined by something much more close to the heart than a couple of tall steel buildings.

Trying to be artsy

on top of the Duomo

panorama of the landscape and city

Roommate picture!

me and Youstina

Rachel carefully heading back down the stairs

 Not that Rome doesn't have the treats like in the pictures above, these were just on every street in at least 5 shops. The waffles were delicious and make my mouth water just thinking about them. The crepes were also to die for, and most of what goes into/on these items is Nutella. Also Florence is known for having the largest leather market in all of Italy. This picture to the right helps a little to explain why. There were dozens of purses and jackets and all kinds of leather things to touch on the streets.

 After our climb up the Duomo we wandered around Florence a bit and ate some lunch and found the Ponte Vecchio, or Old Bridge. It is pretty cool looking from the banks as well as on the bridge. It looks as if there are houses on the bridge and as if it is just another regular road. In actuality when we ventured onto the bridge there were jewelry shops galore. So many jewels that people could buy and it was fun to window shop because some of the items were outrageous and I would never expect somebody to actually wear them!

A closer view of the bridge

My ticket

 After wandering around Florence for most of Friday morning and afternoon it was time to go to the main attraction. The folk band Mumford and Sons was in Florence performing and we were lucky enough to have tickets. They are one of my all time favorite bands because their lyrics have such a powerful meaning and there is not one song of theirs that I don't love.  They were also amazing live, even better than on the C.D. which is really saying something because that is very rare. We also waited for 3 hours to see them and once we were let in, sprinted to the front of the arena. It was general admission so we were able to get in the second row right in the middle. I could see the sweat!

Lead Singer

Had to take a panoramic pic to get them all in

Another version of the david

 The next day I got to see a lot more art. We waited in line for about an hour and a half at the Accademia Gallery. The main thing to see in here was the 18 ft. sculpture of David by Michelangelo. This statue was made out of a piece of trash marble and made it into the most proportional human sculpture to date. After wandering through the museum filled with sculptures and instruments for over an hour it was definitely time to get lunch. The place that was recommended to us was this great little panini shop called I Due Fratellini. I don't know what they did to their sandwiches but they were amazing.

Panini with lettuce, soft goat cheese, and ham

The "Birth of Venus" by Botticelli

 After eating we stood in line for another 2 hours to see the larger museum in Florence known as the Uffizi Gallery. This place was huge, it had 3 floors with over 80 rooms filled with just paintings. A lot of paintings from the renaissance of just the Madonna and child. After looking at about 100 of those I was definitely in the mood for something different. They had paintings and sculptures from the artists Caravaggio, Donatello, Michelangelo,  Rafael, Botticelli, etc. It took a little less time to go through this gallery but only because it closed at 6:35 pm (such an interesting time to close).

 After having walked and stood in line for so long we got very good sleep Saturday night. The next day, on Sunday, we took a walk up to Piazzale Michelangelo. This walk was sort of close to where we were staying but it was worth it. I was able to really grasp and capture the Tuscan landscape.

View from the top

After the pretty view and relaxing in the park up on the top of a Tuscan hillside we had to hop on the carousel by the place we were staying to make for an awesome weekend.