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Published: February 10th 2008
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This day was amazing, flat out amazing. First thing we did was go see David at the Academy. There were a lot of other sculptures and paintings of Madonnas and such from the 1500s and such, but David was the main event. He was beautiful. The marble was a rich white color. The detail was ridiculous. I loved the veins in his arms. He was immensely large in actual size.When I first saw him I wanted to cry. It was magnificent. The locks of his hair flowed and wisped elegantly. He looked so delicate despite the fact that he was made of stone. Beautiful. David really was inspiring too. It was so weird seeing it in person. I'm so used to only seeing him in text books. In real life he's so much more than just a picture on a page surrounded by words with some false meaning placed on him. O well...Next we went to Il Duomo. It was a neat church at the bottom. The top though was amazing! Outside Il Duomo across the plaza was the Bronze Doors of the Bascillica. Heads jutted out like door knobs. It was ridiculous. There were all these biblical scenes and above
the door was a statue of Jesus' baptism. Anyway, we climbed Il Duomo to the top. The outside of the church is white and green painted with a few painting here and there and a red roof. Anyway, it was 463 steps to the top. It twists and winds up and you get dizzy and closterphobic (sp?) because it's narrow as hell. It hurt my butt too 😞 It levels off a little for a bit and you get to walk around the inside of the dome. The ceiling is painted with scenes from Dante's Inferno, Heaven and Pergatory. The scenes from the Inferno where the most interesting. There was one of Satan with the three bodies hanging out of his mouth of the 3 greatest traitors, Judas in the Middle, Brutus and then one I can't remember. There were images of demons and bones and flesh being ripped open. It was creepy. Then we continued to the top. The closer we got the steeper the stairs got. They were almost straight up like a ladder at one point. Up there though in the fresh air was a glorious view. You could see all of Florence. In the far background
you could see this castle. It was so cool. You could see cypress trees too. It was breath taking, sunny and warm. After that we went through this market and I bought a little painting of Florence in a brown frame. I like it. We then proceeded to the bridge at the Ponte Vecchio but were sidetracked by Kayleigh. We went with her and her crew to the Bascillica Santa Croce. That was amazing! Michelangelo, Dante, Galileo and Donatello are buried there. It was weird though because all over the floor were tombs. We were walking on dead people. There was also a lot of religious paintings here as well. They seem to be very prevalent in Florence. I then went with Jason and Natalie and Michelle to get gelatto. Raspberry. Delicious. Very seedy though. Then we walked across the Ponte Vecchio. Nothing too exciting. Just some shops, very expensive jewelry shops. We went and booked our train home after that but didn't get the one we wanted. We wanted to be able to go to Pisa but our train left to early so we couldn't. Bummer. After that we went back to the hostel and me and Natalie and
Monica immediately jumped into bed. Then something ridiculous happened but if I said anything about it on this Jason would be offended. Let's just say it was funny and Monica and Natalie know what I mean when I say "O my God!" We laughed so hard about. Hilarious - After that little escapade we went back to the station so more people could reserve trains and then went on a quest for food. That's one of the best things about being over here. No joke. This was the best part of the whole trip. O wait! On the way down the stairs of Il Duomo I thought I was going to be sick. I was getting nauseated going down and around and then this man going down ahead of us (who I couldn't see because of the winding staircase) kept talking in this low, creepy, demonic voice saying God only knows what in a different language. It was so freaky because it was dark and I had no idea he was there. Moving on...After the escapade at the hostel we went back to the train station so other people could get their tickets and then went on a hunt for
dinner. The dinner adventure was the best! We found a street with lots of restaurants, but some of us didn't want to go so we continued on. Me, Jason, Natalie, Monica and Liza. We walked around for a little while and we didn't mind because we didn't really have anything else to do. Liza eventually said, "Okay, we're going to go down here, take a right then take the second right after that and then take the first left and eat wherever that is." It didn't go exactly like that, but we saw this green neon Ristorante sign and went in. It was a nice candlelit restaurant called Cantina. We had yellow napkins. Our waiter was this cute little Italian named Antonio. We asked him for a wine recommendation and he brought us this double bottle of the best wine I've ever had. It was from Tuscany (the region Florence is in), very authentic. HTen came ordering. I ordered bitter chocolate ravioli stuffed with braised wild boar. It was delicious! We sat at a table that had a nice white cushiony couch thing plus two chairs. When we finished our first bottle of wine, Monica was drunk and it was
hilarious. A large group of Asians came in and Natalie goes "Look Monica" and she says, "I already spotted them." lol. She cracks me up. We asked Antonio to bring us a regular sized bottle of wine this time which he did. It was a sweeter wine. I forgot that he also brough us out an appetizer of mushroom and ricotta souffle. Absolutely delish! We all then ordered dessert of course. Antonio gave each of us girls a cork keychain from the bottles of wine we had and then two other ones. It was such a great experience!! He told us to come back for wine tasting which I hope we do because it was so much fun! After that we went to a bar and had a few drinks before bed 😊
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