Italy, Part 3

After Siena we arrived via train in Florence. Once again, Florence had a completely different feel to it than Rome or Siena. We completely lucked out with our hostel, because although it was a little weird on the inside, it was literally smack dab in the middle of the city. We had 3 full days of exploring there.

On the first day, we went to the Duomo of Florence, which rivals that of Siena. What is most interesting about it is its interior, which has striped stone patterns that are really similar to churches I've visited in Sevilla, Spain that have a huge Arabic influence. I've seen so many churches in the past three months that many of them blend together, but the Duomos in Florence and Siena are unforgettable.

Another highlight of our stay in Florence was seeing the famous statue of David by Michelangelo. Unlike my impression of the Sistine Chapel, I was very impressed. It is an unbelievably accurate sculpture, and much larger than I expected. Within the same museum are some other cool works of art, notably unfinished marble sculptures also by Michelangelo. These were cool to me because you could see the process that he went through in making his sculptures, and it was easy to imagine what his famous David statue must have looked like as it went through all these stages.

On our second day in Florence we visited the house of the Medici family, one of the most important social and political families in all of Europe during the time of the Renaissance. Needless to say, the "house," if you can even call it that, is ridiculous. It seems like a museum due to its size. Not only is it absurdly large, but every single room is ornately decorated with expensive and luxurious furniture, paintings, sculptures, wall hangings, etc. It's almost disgusting how nice the house is. However, one of the rooms may have been my favorite thing in all of Italy, although most people will probably just think I'm weird when I say it. It was a room featuring huge maps (made during the 15th-16th centuries) of every part of the world that had yet been discovered. The room easily had 40 maps. In the center of the room was a huge sculpture of a globe, which you had to walk around to view each of the maps. Maybe it's because I'm a geography loser, but the maps were so detailed, and it was super interesting to see how close (or far off) these mapmakers were. It is incredible because even places like the Caribbean, which was fairly unknown to most Europeans at the time, was pretty accurately mapped out.

We also had one day to relax in Florence, which I personally feel is important on a vacation! It was rainy out, so we all sat inside and read and just hung out. It seemed to fit the lifestyle in Florence as well, which was much more laid back and slow compared to the bustling nature of Rome. After our day of relaxation, we took a train to Venice, our last stop on our Italian tour and the subject of my final blog post.