Happy Easter!

Florence, Italy

Florence is a very exciting place for many reasons, not the least of which is that it's my middle name. The train on the way here from Venice was insane. I guess that everyone wanted to travel to get home or to get somewhere else for the easter holiday but the train was jammed. There are compartments that are supposed to fit 6 people...well, we had 9 in ours, and the hall way was so full that you couldn't even walk through it.

It's been a very arty weekend. I'm here with Anne (yay!) and yesterday we stood in line for three and a half hours to get into the Uffize museam. It has the most famous collection of any museam in Florence. It has stuff by all the ninja turtles that painted (michelangelo, rafael and leonardo) as well as lots of other famous italian artists like Fra Angelico and Boticelli. My favorite paintings where the birth of venus and the allegory of spring, both by botecelli. You see pictures of them in books and they don't look like anything special, but when you see them up close, they are incredible. I think it's a combination of they're size (big) and the fact that someone painted them 500 years ago, and the fact that they're actually real. I don't think I've ever been that impressed with a painting before.

Today the art continued, and we waited (only an hour and a half this time) to get into the academia. That's where THE david is. The one that michelangelo sculpted. In the hall leading up to him are 4 of michelangelo's unfinished sculptures. Because they're unfinished you can kind of see how he was making them which is really cool. And THE david is amazing! That's one good looking guy (yes I know he's 5 meters tall and made of marble). His hands are a bit too big I think though.

The coolest thing in florence is San Marie del Fiore which is the big cathedral. The outside of the cathedral is decorated in white and pink and green marble (not the colors I would have picked) but it's amazing looking nonetheless. And on this cathedral is the dome designed by brunalleschi, which happens to be the biggest masonry dome in the world. I read a book about it over christmas break. He made the whole thing without any wooden centering, and to get the 2 ton blocks of marble up to the top he invented some completely new machines like an ox hoist. It's actually two domes, the inner and outer shell. And I'm going to climb it tomorrow! I get to climb in between the domes and see how it was actually made! I'm really exicted if you can't tell. Anyways, we went to easter mass in the cathedral this morning which was all in italian. We missed the fireworks for the festival of the exploding cart though because daylight savings time started this morning.