Firenze and Il Doumohmygod

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After a short train ride from Rome, which i think that everyone expected to be longer, we found ourselves in a warm cooking pot called Florence/Firenze. Just by judging from the walk from the station to our hotel, i could just feel that i was going to enjoy my stay here much better than in Rome.

To find our hotel we basically just had to follow the road that was turning ahead of us, but looking up over the rooftops of the nearby houses we saw the gold orb that sits upon the top of Florence Cathedral. This was where we needed to go. And following the road and making the turn, there it was; the Cathedral was just as beautiful as i have imagined it, if not even more so. And bigger too!

Well situated in our hotel, and having payed (!) for internet we went out into the market of Florence. It was a great mixture of fabrics, clothes, leather objects and clothes, jewelry and soccer attire. Here i made a few bargains for some people back home, but enough said about that. That night was just finished of at the hotel, getting a good nights sleep before we had our big day tomorrow, visiting the Cathedral!

After a good breakfast, much better than in Rome i say, we headed towards the Museo della Opera. In there they had a ton of cool stuff; Altarpieces, Reliquary statues with relics still inside of them, and the Mary Magdalene by Donatello.
She was just standing there, in the middle of the relics room she stood like a brown pillar of wood. Her face even more full of expressions than i had ever could have imagined! What a sight it was to finally see her in person. Apparently she was moved from the Baptistery in the 70's when Florence was flooded and she stood with water up to her neck. Then she was saved to the Museo to avoid the water, and there she now stands.

Since it was a Sunday, the cathedral was closed for mass early in the morning, and it was closed at six for another mass. So between 1.30pm to 5.30pm we had to go in to the cathedral and see it for ourselves. It sure was a sight in there, but as we had been told before coming in there, it was very sparsely decorated. Unlike some other churches we have been into, there were few painted windows, and even fewer statues and fresco's in the ceiling.
The front part of the church, just under the dome and the apse, was filled with chairs for the mass later on, so therefor it was sealed of for visitors like us.
Just like in the past churches we've been to, i lit another candle for Stefan Liv.

Yesterday it was time for a trip to the Bargello National Museum , a museum that was home for three David sculptures; two by Donatello and one By Verocchio. But sadly, Veriocchios David was just being restored after it's exhibition in Torino so that was unavailable for us. But the two Donatello sculptures where very nice to look at, and me an Kelsey noted how big their feet, and especially toes, had been made.

After that we had a short break and then we scurried of to the church of Santa Maria Novella, which were situated right by the train station that we had arrived at two days earlier. It was a well decorated Gothic church, with an Apse that was highly decorated with narrative paintings from passages of the bible. In here i tried to do my first sketches, enough said....

Later that night some of us ended up on a Piazza just by our hotel where we sat and sketched to the music of some highly skilled musicians! The drawings i made will never see the light of day though...

Today we headed of to the Uffizi Gallery that must have one of the biggest displays of art i have ever seen! Granted, not all the works where in my taste, but most of it where. It was really cool to see the Altarpieces of Giotto, Cimabue and Duccio, which we have read about in Art History II. They where much bigger in person than i thought they would be!

A couple of rooms ahead was the Botticelli room, to actually have seen 'The Spring' and 'The birth of Venus' is just too good to be true. Also much bigger than i thought!

I also saw a personal favorite of mine, Piero della Francescas portraits of Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro. It was much smaller than i thought, but there is just something about this piece that i love.

Up ahead we saw many number of paintings, but 50 rooms with over a thousand objects to look at, made you kind of tired and i called it quits after i had my lunch uppon the terrace overlooking the city.

So now i am lying here at the hotel room, probably will try to climb the top of the cathedral later, and if not, i will do it tomorrow! Just gotta find some company for the walk up there.

Ciaaaaao!

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