Firenze take 3

This past Wednesday was our third visit to the lovely city of Firenze. As always, Kelsey, Cara and I wait until the last possible moment to wake up, throw clothes on, and rush down to the train station in time for a 7: something am train ride. This ride was a little different though. We had been wondering what happens when there's no room left on the train...what happens is you crowd the isles and air space in between carts hoping that everyone leaves at the next stop. However, since you're crowding everyone in no one can move to get off or on. Extra bonus, people smell really great in Europe. Nope. Lucky for us, Arezzo was the big stop for all the school children and business people to get off so we soon got seats.

This time in Firenze, we went to a museum which housed original and reproduced relics from the Duomo. All the statues on the outside of the building are no longer original, so the remains are kept in this museum and replacements are made as well. The main interesting sculpture that we saw was a Michelangelo statue which he not only didn't finish, but hacked to pieces because he didn't like it. An apprentice put the pieces back together and whisked it away to the Duomo. Also, one of the statues on the side of the church looks exactly like Voldemort! Harry Potter/ Cara Cotter felt much anguish at the sight of it. Creepy.

Next we went into the Duomo. If you've seen the outside you know it's an extremely ornate masterpiece. Not so much on the inside. There's practically no decor inside except for in the large dome. I guess they spent all their money on the outside? We crowded into a small downstairs section to see a little of the foundation and the tomb of Pope Gregory VIII- which is practically in the gift shop. Note to all reading this: if I happen to suffer an untimely death my wish is to have my tomb smack in the middle of a gift shop where cheap re-productions are sold at inflated prices. Nothing says rest in peace that.

                                                                                                                

After the Duomo- Lunch! First we went to a hole in the wall sandwich place (It's literally a hole in a wall with two guys behind a counter) which is cheap and super yummy. Only 2,50 Euro for proscutto and mozzarella! Then we set out for some cabob place which Cara vaguely remembered the location of, but not really at all. After blindly walking circles around the center of the city, we split into two groups- those bound and determined to have a cabob and those up for round two at the sandwich shop. I was in the later. With second sandwich in hand a few of us went to piazza Signoria to chow down and sit in the sun.

Now for the best part of the day. We had our science and technology class with Giovanni again at the Museo Galileo. It was show and tell/ touch day. First he showed us some really old scientific devices/ models that did different things, like use electricity to play bells. Then the highlight- we got to flip through some of the first widely distributed books printed on a printing press. The oldest was a mathematic book from the 1500's. Another cool one was an astronomy book that had a working model of the astrological signs and how to read the skies. We put our grubby little hands all over them for sometime, while hoping we weren’t ruining them and that no one would get paper cut from the multi-century old books. What kind of infection would that be?

After class it was off to the Ponte Vecchio! Holy cow, it would take forever just to window shop all of that. Lots of sparkly jewelry everywhere and I happen to have major shiny syndrome. The view was absolutely beautiful, like something out of a fairytale. We sadly had to scurry away to catch the last train before dinner. After a train ride home and long walk up the hill, we had our delicious reward of home Italian cooking and vino.