Friday, August 12, 2005

My own personal renaissance

Well I got up and said goodbye to Rome. I said goodbye to Nathan Never which is a comic book that is quite popular over here and consequently everyone knew my name in Rome :)

Then I boarded the train to Florence, or Firenze. The main station is Santa Maria Novella. Once there, I checked in my luggage (score!)

The station gets it name from the adjacent church of the same name. It has quite different architecture and colors from the other churches that I had been seeing (notice the green and white). I had the most fun there too; there was this sign that said free tours so I went up to it. There was this guy, Sergio, and he just walked around and gave me a personal tour and we talked about life and the church and it was fun to see how passionate he was about it all. So if you didn't know already, Florence was basically where the Renaissance was born and the early stages of it can be tracked in different pieces that are around in the church. The other highlight for me was this wall of sinners, which took my off guard. It had a picture of the devil and labeled different levels of hell and each of the sinner categories and it was quite morbid. Usually churches only house the good side (angels and happines). Sergio gave some pretty interesting insight into the paintings and history of the museum.

Sergio warned me as he left, that I should have gotten reservations for the Uffizi and Academy. So, I made my way to go see Michaelangelo's David. Now Sergio was right, I waited 2 and a half hours to see David and a few subpar random paintings and sculptures. No cameras were allowed in there (but I still took some poor quality covert ones). I made the time pass in line by speaking some spanish with a tour group next to me in line from mexico. After that, I didn't even want to try the Uffizi.

The duomo has similar architecture to the santa maria novella.

I made it to the 17:33 train to Venezia and I am glad that I didn't spend much longer there. Maybe I will make a reservation next time.

I miss Rome :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

2.5 hours! Wow, you must have really wanted to see David!