Lucca, Boboli Gardens and Orsanmichele

Figured I'd cram these three day trips into one post, since I have a ton more pictures from the Galileo museum and Fiesole that I still need to go through.

We took the train to Lucca after leaving Pisa and had lunch there. Cute town. Some neat architecture. 

Also the birthplace of Puccini and some famous cellist whose name I can't remember.

This is not our entire group, since only some people chose to visit Lucca (there was also the option of a nearby beach town). We ate lunch on one of the outdoor patios outside a restaurant in this square.

The next day, which was a Sunday, my two roommates and I paid a visit to the Boboli Gardens, partly just to see them, partly to find a quiet place to do homework. Apparently, someone in the Medici family built the gardens so his wife would have a pretty spot to take a stroll. Frickin' Medici. I'm calling massive overkill.

We found a crane friend near one of the many fountains. Hello, crane friend.

And there I am with my roommates. We balanced our cameras precariously at the top of a flight of steps to get this picture and then ran to get in-frame before the timer went off. Kinda surprised it worked so well.

Earlier this week, we did a short field trip to Orsanmichele, a square church in the heart of Florence that used to be the city granary. You can still see the chutes inside where you used to go and fill up your bags of grain before loading them onto your mule cart or whatever. Now it's another gorgeous church, but the most interesting thing about it is the niches - one for every major guild in Renaissance Florence. The director told us that work stopped on the niches during the plague outbreak of 1348, and afterwards the heads of the guilds were told to get their niches done by a certain date or lose their spot.

This one is for the Stonecarver's Guild. I wanted a phot of this specific one because it's relevant to my novel! Several prominent characters belong to the equivalent sculptor's guild in my speculative alternate Italian Renaissance city. I am getting some excellent hands-on research done here.

Another bird friend.

And I just had to zoom in on these hands. This niche depicts Doubting Thomas about to put his hand in Christ's wound, and the suspended tension in their poses is masterful.

Sorry for the scanty photographs in this post. I promise I have more cool things to show you.

Thanks for reading!

- Kasha