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Published: February 15th 2010
Oh my gosh so, florence was amazing!! so incredible and i know even this incredibly long blog I am going to write (just a warning) will not even come close to doing it justice. I loved it and I am so glad that I went! I think I'm going to just write chronologically so that I don't get confused and you guys can hear all of what I did. Here it goes...
We got into Rome around 9pm because our plane was late so we didnt make it to florence till around 1am. On the bus ride I got to talk to emily, another american who has actually been here a full year and was my roommate for the weekend. She is doing art history back home and is maybe looking at going into conservation. We started talking all about it and the programs and all, it was amazing! Of course when I have completely marked conservation off my list, God shoves it back in my face! haha so now I am on a new mission to re-research all of the conservation stuff and see what I have to do to get into one of those programs. I thought about
it really hard all weekend and I just realized that, that career would be perfect for me and it would allow me to travel, work with priceless and incredibly famous art, be able to see what others only dream of seeing and be respected. Also if I did conservation I could work in Europe and get paid to be there. I like it!! Florence and talking to Emily made me realize that I'm a nerd in love with art and only doing my art isn't enough.
Anyway once we got there we were starving, since we had been at the airport since 1pm with only snack food in between. So we went on a hunt at 1am to find some food. It was amazing to see how dead the city was especially after cork being SO populated until around 3am. We found a little cafe and got a small pizza. We then went up to our room and low and behold, we had a TUB!!!!! OMG I was SOOOO excited! I have been craving a bath since almost the second I got here and we had one in florence. it was amazing!! i will have to stay in hotels
more often haha. the beds were really really comfortable so i slept great and was ready for a packed friday!
friday started with the bargello museum where Donatello's david was. Holy criminy ya I stood next to it! as well as the competition pieces for the bronze doors of the baptistry. Ya I was there!! we then went to the orsanmichele that had a few famous statues by donatello and a few others. We went inside and there was one of the nativity altarpieces. I can't remember which one exactly but one I have studied in at least 3 classes. In that chapel, in front of that famous altarpiece, I lit a candle and said a prayer for my nanny (I love you!!) Over our lunch break a few of us went to see the Masaccio frescos. So I saw "the expulsion from the garden of eden" and the "tribute money" - ya those of you who know what that is, it is ok to be jealous!!
After that we went to Santa maria Novella where giotto's crucifix and masaccio's trinity and ghirlandaio's frescoes are. HOLY MOLY!!!!!!!!!!! I was near tears at being there, seriously. It was INCREDIBLE.
especially giotto's crucifix!!! I remember two years ago studying that and having it on my flashcard and thinking oh this isnt that impressive. Well holy crap when you walk in it is about twice human body size and hanging from the ceiling just above your head. It was so powerful, so looming. I just stood there thinking, If I had known... It was amazing I mean I can't even describe how amazing seeing that was. And Masaccio's trinity. I have studied that since high school. HIGH SCHOOL!! my sophmore year! so what 6 years! I have studied that for 6 years and i was allowed to stand in front of it. oh wow I was like a kid meeting santa!
We then went to the santa trinita where we saw ghirlandio's frescoes. Again so so cool! I lit a candle and said a prayer there for my family.
After that emily and I were so wiped that we went back to the hotel for a nap. then she had a brilliant idea to do a foot soak in the tub. Haha so we both sat in the tub for like a half hour. It was amazing and my
feet loved it! After that we went for an adventurous journey to find food. We came across this really italian place that seemed to be for locals. It was really nice and so good 😊 Amazingly we didn't get lost. We had basically walked the entire city that day so it was a lot easier to find our way around than we had thought.
Bath, sleep then day 3. This was the EPIC day!!!!!! We started in the Uffizi. And OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!! That was my heaven!! I stood in a room with the "Venus of Urbino". HELLO- the VENUS OF FREAKING URBINO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! everyone knows that one! it was... amazing. simply amazing. I did tear up a little there. It was just... I WAS IN THE SAME ROOM AS THAT PAINTING!!! nothing could be cooler than that!! oh but wait! I got to see daVinci's annunciation and the presentation of the magi. I know I got both of those names wrong, but basically thats what they were. Dad- do you remember that conservation movie on the daVinci. YA I SAW THAT PAINTING!!! it was amazing! AMAZING!! It was so large, so incredible and I knew the back story! That
was one of those moments that was like- I could do that. I could restore something like that. and I was just awed.
We then got a little lost but finally found our way and get this, get this we saw (are you ready) GENTILESCHI's Judith Slaying Holofernes. YEAH. YEAH. She is my favorite painting of ALL time and that is my favorite work of hers and I stood there in front of it wanting to drop to my knees. It was like seeing my idol. I have loved her and that piece for 7 or 8 solid years and I was there in front of it. You can't imagine what I felt: It was just one of those moments that I will never have again. I stood where she stood. Can you imagine that, she stood the exact distance from that work and painted it. I was there, I got to be a part of that. I am just so lucky! I hope that you all one day get to feel that. If that was not enough, Caravaggio's bacchus was placed right next to it. Ha oh man, I was dying. And emily who was there with me
was just as much of a kid in a candy store. We were both so humbled and oh man, amazed. WOW!!
So after that if you can believe it, we went to the Palazzo Medici where the original spot for donatello's david was and where the chapel of the magi is. Another holy crap moment. It was so beautiful! It just shimmered with how beautiful it was. It was so colorful!! It was really great to stand in the middle and just marvel at the amazingness. We then went over the the Museum of San Marco but they had already closed so our teacher gave us a break but said that we could go see the david if we wanted in that time. A big group of us went and get this we got in, in under 4 min and we got in for FREE!! emily and i (the only americans) had to pretend we were irish students. but ya our teacher had a letter that said we were on a school trip (which had gotten us into a lot of the other places for free) but ya this was an add on. So ya we saw the huge
the amazing Michelangelo's david. I remember when i saw it the last time, i was with my mom, we were in line for hours and there were SO many people. I don't know which was better because i loved the gasp and crowd of the 1st time but it was pretty neat to be in the room with only 20 people. Also right there was the Academia de Bella. which is where i was going to go to school originally. It made me start thinking about if I had made the right choice. and I did. I really did. I was not and am not ready to live in florence. I think the next time I return I will be, but now I wanted a community and a place where I felt at home. Florence was beautiful and incredible and I would definitely want to live there someday but I believe I made the best choice for me now. If I had gone there, I would have painted for a year and come back hating it. Now, rather I appreciate it and have the opportunity to look into doing something more. It would have been amazing to be in florence
but in Ireland, I am home. We then went to the San Lorenzo and I lit a candle and said a prayer there for all my friends back home.
That night emily and I went to this really great family style italian restaurant and got pizza and fries. Haha we had seen a couple eating that through the window the night before and we both agreed that it would be amazing and it was.
Bath, sleep, day 4 (sunday): We went back to San Marco and were able to see the monastery and a few altarpieces. It was cool but I wasn't quite in awe after the two previous days. We then sat outside the baptistery and the cathedral and were told about the patronage of each. Remember this was all for my class "Art and Patronage in Renaissance Italy" so that was the theme of the whole weekend. We were then released for the day at around 10:30am and told to be back at the hotel (which was literally 3 min from the cathedral) by one to catch the bus back to rome. A few of us wanted to see the inside of the cathedral and the
dome and ended up being ushered in for mass. So get this we observed sunday mass in THE cathedral in florence in ITALIAN. ya that was so cool! haha now I have heard mass in 3 different languages. We then ate and got on the bus and headed back. Florence was amazing and I was sad to leave but I missed cork. And was so glad to get back and hang out with my roommate lara for a few hours. Oh and i guess my valentines day curse was lifted for this year. It was not bad at all. Actually it was a rather spectacular day! And my roommates and maybe emily are going to go see leap year in a few days at the cinema.
So ya that was my amazing weekend. If i left anything out i will try to add it in the next few days. oh haha forgot one, emily is planning a trip to prague and a few other places in april. and she invited me to go with her since we are such good travel buddies and are both rather obsessed with art 😊 I don't know if I'm going, but it would
be really fun and I am going to think about it.
As for today I finally found a sweatshirt that is warm and actually has by birth year on it with the word University on it (not UCC though). Hahah i thought it looked cool. You will probably get a pic of it soon. And then I went to tesco (grocery store) got food for the week and I have my culture class in an hour. Kasey gets back tomorrow from London 😊 and I will probably go to the reopened gym sometime this week!!! yay!!!! ok well I need to go.
Talk to you all soon. Hope you have a great day!!
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Sounds like you had a GREAT few days in Italy. Glad youare back and safe. May you have all the happiness and luck that life can hold And at the end of your rainbows may you find a pot of Gold...