Eric’s Journal

Our trip continued to be extremely warm, but we did find one solution in Florence- 3 square meals of GELATO! Along with the Renaissance, Florence managed to elevate ice cream to an art form. We tried quite a few flavors, such as zuppa inglese, tiramisu, mille folia, stracciatella, and something with hazelnuts… (please forgive our spelling)

When we arrived we decided to climb to the highest point of the city and made it to the top of Brunelleschi’s dome. (the main cathedral) There were about 473 steps to the top and the views of the Tuscan hills were definitely worth it. Once again it gave us a great perspective on what we were going to see in the city. Of course after we came down, we were really hot, so we had some gelato to cool us off.

The next day we visited the Pitti Palace, Boboli Gardens (no pizza!), Santa Croce Cathedral and the Uffizi gallery. At the Pitti Palace we saw a bunch of Raffaellos and some elaborately decorated rooms. As we walked through the Boboli Gardens we were already exhausted and skipped the “grotto”, which we later learned housed some Michaelangelo statues. Santa Croce had some famous paintings too, but we can’t remember what they were right now. The Uffizi gallery had the 2 most famous Boticelli paintings, “The Birth of Venus” and “La Primavera”. The audioguide was extremely disappointing, so we cheered ourselves up with having some gelato afterwards.

The next day we saw “David” in the Accademia Gallery and then visited a series of galleries and churches with works by Donatello, Massacio, Fra Lippi, Giotto, and Luca Della Robia. You always hear about how amazing David is, but until you see it in person, you can’t imagine how impressive it really is. Look at the back of your hand, you see that vein? Well, Michaelangelo, somehow carved that into David’s hand, which is made of marble… The details are amazingly precise and slightly overwhelming.

Since we saw so much of Florence the first two days, on the third day we took a tour to Siena and San Gimignano. Yes, a tour, that just explains to you how tired we were and how much we didn’t want to figure out the bus schedule on our own. The Tuscan countryside is truly beautiful. We didn’t have much time in Siena but saw the ornately decorated cathedral and an altar painting by Duccio. San Gimignano was another walled city (we’ve managed to hit quite a few on this trip). What made San G pretty unique was its 14 towers and of course its gelato! We probably had the best gelato of the entire trip here, although that might be because it was so hot.

Tomorrow morning we leave Rome for home. See you soon!

Update: view photos of Florence.

Filed by LeAnn at 12:18 pm under Europe 2007
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