Day 7: Florence and DavidHotel: Hotel Palazzo dal Borgo
Phrase of the Day: Il conto, per favore (The bill, please) |
Miles
Mud Angel
High Temperature for the Day
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Did you know?
The piano was invented in Florence in 1698 by Bartolomeo Christofori (originally known as the pianoforte)
Arrivederci Venice, Buongiorno Florence
Today we once again boarded the crowded vaporetto in Venice to get back to our bus and then on our way to our next stop, Florence. A quick lunch at the rest stop outside Bologna, talking about how the food in Italy is very regional, where we ended up with some traditional delicious sandwiches there. After dropping off our luggage, we were on our way to our walking tour of Florence. Listening to our local guide talk about the many palaces that we walked past, and learning the history of Roman times to the Medicis to its rich history of banking was so interesting. The Duomo is enormous and beautiful and was, at one time, the largest church in Italy. We ended our walk at the Accademia, viewing Michelangelo's famous David, but I found more compelling his unfinished pieces known as "Prisoners". They were captivating and a fascinating insight into how Michelangelo envisioned his art! The museum was full of so much famous artwork, old altarpieces, paintings, sculptures, and even a music room with a Stradivarius viola. We could have spent so much more time here, but we had to go back and connect back up with our tour group for dinner tonight. Dinner was wonderful, per usual, and the owner brought out a dessert cart so we could all sample a myriad of wonderful sweets.
Visiting Florence was like attending a surprise party every day
- Jennifer Coburn
Florence's Mud Angels
An unexpected surprising story: In 1966, the river Arno flooded its banks and subsequently flooded Florence, filling the churches, museums, and libraries with mud. At the time, youth hosteling across Europe had made European travel by young people very popular and had created a culture unique to these young travellers. When disaster struck Florence, this all came together in an effort to clean up Florence and save the artistic treasures of the city. These young volunteers became known as "Mud Angels" or, in Italian, gli angeli del fango. Plaques around the city show how deep the mud was in various locations around the city. As our local guide pointed this out, one member of our tour group spoke up saying that he had been one of those young people who had come to Florence and lent his efforts to helping the city. Stephanie said it was the first time she had had a "Mud Angel" on one of her tours!
The Many Facets of Florence
This morning we are heading out for a guided tour of the Uffizi Gallery with our local guide, Francesco, whose knowledge of art was on clear display. We marveled at altarpieces from the 12th century and walked through the galleries, able to see the evolution of figure painting and renaissance art as we progressed to Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" and Michelangelo's "Spring". Roman busts line the ornate halls and the ceiling frescoes made the entire experience an immersion in the world of art. Florence, and the world, have much to thank the Medici family for as they, as patrons of the arts, sponsored and collected much of this artwork. Our local tour ended here and we had the rest of the day to explore Florence on our own. We went to the Bargello Museum, which is primarily focused on sculpture and includes Donatello's sculpture of "David", so very different from Michelangelo's which we had seen the day before. The striking difference in interpretation and style showed how the evolution of how the human form was shown changed over just 60 years.
After a little shopping and finding a beautiful leather jacket to buy at Massimo's leather, we stopped in and toured the Church of Santa Maria Novella. I loved the museums we had seen, but there is something to be said for seeing these ornate altarpieces and paintings still set in a church where they were intended, surrounded by the frescoes, stained glass, and carved wood of the church. We then stopped into the small Acqua della Regina - Santa Maria Novella which has been open for 600 years as a perfumery and apothecary, known for the special perfume they made for Catherine de Medici in the 1500s. We ended the day at Piazza Michelangelo, a walk up the hill to look over Florence, at sunset.
After a little shopping and finding a beautiful leather jacket to buy at Massimo's leather, we stopped in and toured the Church of Santa Maria Novella. I loved the museums we had seen, but there is something to be said for seeing these ornate altarpieces and paintings still set in a church where they were intended, surrounded by the frescoes, stained glass, and carved wood of the church. We then stopped into the small Acqua della Regina - Santa Maria Novella which has been open for 600 years as a perfumery and apothecary, known for the special perfume they made for Catherine de Medici in the 1500s. We ended the day at Piazza Michelangelo, a walk up the hill to look over Florence, at sunset.
HELPFUL HINT: Be flexible in your plans so that you can capitalize on things you want to explore that you might never read about in a book! Using Rick Steve's guidebook, we tried to have an assortment of things we might want to do when we had free time. That said, our wonderful Rick Steves guide, Stephanie, and the local walking tour guides were good at making suggestions for interesting things to do. That's how we found ourselves walking to the Piazza Michelangelo at sunset and how we were able to peek in the window at a luthier (violin-maker) shop!