florence, part 1

on our drive from rome to florence we made a couple of stops in tuscany. we visited this ancient town called civita di bagnoregio; it's located on a hill accessible only by a small footbridge and surrounded on all sides by beautiful green countryside. we ate magnum bars and walked around past all the charming ivy-covered old houses. it was lovely. our next stop was in a small town called orvieto. my professor and his family had actually lived there for a couple years previously, so it was fun having them show us around. we ate lunch and window shopped and got gelato, and then we visited the cathedral. it was beautiful and so interesting to learn about. i'm really glad we made those little stops on our way.

we got to florence later that day and did a little walking around and exploring in the city. florence is beautiful and pretty safe, so we had a later curfew there and we spent quite a bit of time in the city at night. we loved it from the moment we arrived. florence is well-lit at night and clean, as well as being very walkable, so that made for a pleasant experience. between the arno river and the duomo it's really easy to orient yourself too, so we had no problems finding our way around. walking around that first night we came across rollerbladers, an overenthusiastic street performer (who had gathered quite the crowd and tried to trap us into staying for his show), a cool indoor concert, and plenty of others just walking around and enjoying the nightlife. it was so great.

the less-than-ideal part about florence for us was the hotel. it was pretty ghetto (the bathroom was about 2 feet wide and there was a wall-mounted tv that i was pretty sure was going to slide off its stand and kill me in my sleep) but we managed. after all, we were in italy! our first full day in florence we spent at the uffizzi and the accademia, seeing masterpieces like botticelli's birth of venus and michelangelo's david. neither of those museums allowed photography, so the photos above were taken sneakily. the david is totally unreal in person! i knew it was 17 feet tall, but it took standing in front of it to really fathom how huge that is. everything by michelangelo is pretty unbelievable!