a brief visual tour

Buongiorno, ragazzi!  I might have to make more than one post per week - I had way too many photos to sort through just from the last few days, and I have so many stories to tell. Oh dear. It feels like I've been here much longer than a week already.

Welcome to this ridiculously gorgeous city. These photos were taken from the steps leading up to the San Miniato church on the hillside above Florence. San Miniato was one of our first class field trips.

The first few days, the other ACM students and I mostly wandered around in widening circles from Linguaviva and Hotel Duca d'Aosta (the Italian language school and the hotel where we were staying, which are in the same building). We got lost a lot, but we did find some of the famous landmarks, not to mention about a squillion gelato shops. Most of the important buildings are clustered together near the river. Here we have the Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace), also known as the City Hall. 

And here's the Triumphal Arch and the Piazza della Repubblica (Republic Square). There are several triumphal arches in Rome, but I think Florence only has the one. The first time we came through this square, it was dark outside and there were vendors flinging these spinning laser toys in the air. The program director was leading all twenty-four of us back to Linguaviva, and she told us not to look at the laser toys because the vendors would pick your pockets if you looked up. Luckily, no one got their pockets picked.

This is the inside of the central market (mercato), where they sell all kinds of fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, breads, and pastas. There are a few restaurants on the upper floor that sell green salads, but they're too pricey for everyday lunch. Pretty building though. 

I should get some pictures of the booths outside - they're crammed all along the streets outside the food market, selling everything from purses to watches and jewelry to sketchbooks to leather jackets to scarves to clothing to cheesy souvenirs. I practiced my haggling yesterday and got this turquoise bracelet.

On one of our first forays into the market, three of us stopped to look at jackets for when the weather cools down. The vendor invited us into his store, which was on the same street behind his booth, and fitted us all for our body types. He was very nice, very funny,  and had very passable English, although, like many Italians, he tended to pluralize things that are not supposed to be plural, like "it fits you betters" and "come back laters". The jackets, although they fit us very well, were far out of our price range. 

And finally, in terms of landmarks, there's this thing you might have heard of called the Duomo, or Santa Maria di Fiore. It's the main cathedral of the city and it's massive and it feels like you can see it no matter which way you turn. It's everywhere. All the streets lead to it.

You'll be tripping merrily along this narrow street between rows of tall buildings and suddenly there's the cathedral all up in your face like BAM:

Oh hello there. Takes your breath away every time.

Our program took a field trip to the Duomo and the neighboring Baptistery yesterday. I was happy to finally see the inside of the Baptistery, since I missed it last time I was in Florence. The outside of the building is currently undergoing renovation/restoration, so there's a big screen up around the entire thing, but the inside sure is looking spiffy. Check out the ceiling!

The different rings tell various stories from the Bible in pictoral form so that the illiterate poor could "read" it. According to the program director, who gave us tons of valuable background info, Dante was baptized here as a child. The depiction of Hell to the right and below the large figure of Christ heavily influenced his Inferno. We also walked by the Dante museum earlier this week, although we didn't go in. There were fresh flowers under his bust outside the door.

After our tour of the Baptistery, we crossed over to the cathedral itself. The inside is absolutely cavernous. No amount of pictures can capture that huge of a space (though the San Pietro in the Vatican dwarfs it). I did take another ceiling picture. Because I have a nice new camera and why not. I knew most of the information the director told us about the dome, since I wrote that huge music history paper on it last year. Sometimes it's nice to feel like you know things.

We also went down under the cathedral and walked through that museum, which I didn't even know existed. There are layers of old architecture down there from previous churches built on the same spot. People in Italy used to knock down old buildings and build right on top of them, and now it's excavated in such a way that you can see the different flagstones for the floors of each old church. It was too dim down there for good pictures, but I got fantastic ones from... well, wait and see.

We had a few hours of free time after that tour ended, so some of us got in line to climb up inside the dome. We waited for about half an hour in line before going up about a billion miles of spiral staircases and teeny corridors in the walls. Didn't get pictures in there either, because I was holding up my skirt so I wouldn't trip and die, but I did take the time to snap a quick shot through one of the itty bitty windows in the stairwell.

We went along a catwalk where our heads were literally a foot beneath the base of the dome on the inside - got to see the paintings up close and everything. I don't understand how the painters had any idea what they were even looking at. A forearm doesn't look like a forearm anymore when it's longer than you are tall. 

We reentered the dome shell and scrambled along more narrow passages and steep staircases with rickety railings until we climbed basically a cement ladder and emerged on top of the dome. AND EVERYTHING WAS WORTH IT FOREVER.

A thousand times worth it. Even the claustrophobic girl in our group said so. And also the two girls who were afraid of heights. 

That is literally the entire Arno River Valley.

I could have spent hours up there, but we had homework to do so we climbed back down.

I leave you with a view of the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) and the Arno River at sundown.

Thanks for reading! Next time: stay tuned for a lot of gushing about my wonderful host family, perhaps some pictures of their darling apartment near the river, and of course pictures from Lucca and Pisa!

Molto grazie tutti. Avete un buon fine di settemana!

I love you all,

 - Kasha