Next stop on my tour of Italy? Florence! Every single person I talked to before traveling to Italy told me I had to go to Florence. They said I should go to Rome too, but I already had that covered.
We gave Florence a full two days, as we wanted to see as much as possible, and my friend Seth would never let me live it down if I didn’t spend at least one weekend there. We stayed with some friends who also go to Northeastern, which was very kind of them, and the first thing I noticed was their apartment. It was much larger than my Roman apartment, with a full living room and enormous kitchen, clean white walls, and an overall well-kept feel. Not that I’m complaining about my accommodations from AUR, but it was interesting to see what $20,000 gets you in other study abroad programs.
Another difference between Florence and Rome is the size of the city. Florence is completely walkable, much more akin to the size of Boston. In fact, I never took any form of public transportation while there. The streets are also smaller and more suited to walking than some of the busier areas of Rome, where taxis and scooters nearly kill pedestrians on a daily basis. I wish I had some pictures to show you, but on our main day of sightseeing in Florence, I forgot my camera in the apartment! I know I’m a terrible person, you’ll just have to settle for the dozens of Facebook albums worth of photos.
Anyway, after taking in the overall feel of the city, we were taken to see a bunch of the sites by our gracious hosts. We went of course to the Duomo of Florence. (Duomo simply means church, interestingly enough and there are famous churches called “The Duomo” in several Italian cities. Still, it is absolutely enormous, I would venture to say larger than the Castle in Prague. Walking around the Duomo it is hard to tell where one part of it ends and the other begins. It’s so big that it contains the largest brick dome ever constructed. I don’t know how many brick domes there are in existence, but trust me, this thing is huge.
After the Duomo we went to the next big tourist attraction, the statue of David by Michelangelo. It is much larger than the Michelangelo sculpted by Bernini, which is currently in Rome, and it features Michelangelo in the contra pposta pose, (go Art of Rome class,) which just means he is standing up with his weight on one foot. You’re not supposed to take pictures of the statue, so I don’t have any to show you once again. Well, I might, but I don’t want to incriminate myself. After the sightseeing, we were quite tired and we wanted a real Italian meal to top off the day. We all settled on a hold in the wall restaurant and I ended up having an absolutely delicious beef dish. I wish I could remember what it was called, but it was incredibly tender and juicy, unlike any beef I have ever had in the states. I was very satisfied.
Of course, I didn’t just walk around Florence looking at statues of biblical figures. I also went shopping for leather. Our hosts were all girls studying in Florence, so they wanted to go shopping a bit more than I did, but I still had a good time. The leather markets are right in the center of the city and seem to extend for miles in each direction. They are kind of like the souvenir shops of other cities. Each small hut sells basically the same thing, and people come and heckle you to buy. I didn’t actually buy any leather products, but I did buy a scarf for my sister. As was expected, the leather was cheaper than in the states, but still not cheap enough for me to buy a leather jacket, not really my style.
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