florence

florence was amazing, of course. i love florence. it might be my favorite city in italy. venice and florence are the tip tops right now. but anyways, we got to florence on tuesday afternoon and went to a restaurant that courtney's friend recommended. it was amazing and so good. there are plates on the walls that different people have signed. i got the pasta sampler where i got to try 5 different kinds of pasta. i love it. i think ill bring jordon here. and they're famous for their blueberry steak!

best restaurant!

acqua al 2

florence has the best graffiti

the next day was our first real day in florence with school. we started out at the duomo, but it was closed. then moved on to the orsanmichele church, but that was closed. so we skipped them and went straight to the main square of florence. this is where a lot of the political matters used to take place. i didn't recognize it at first, but then i quickly remembered that this was where the uffizi was! it doesn't look the same at the crack of dawn during winter as it does in the summer....

front of the duomo

duomo

heather learning some facts about the duomo

this is above the baptistry's doors across the street

baptistry doors

the main political square in florence

last day heather is ever 21

she is now 22, hence coco's fingers

the whole group in front of the copy of the david

after we were amazed by all of the statues in the square, we headed over to ponte vecchio, which is a famous bridge in florence. it is interesting because it has a lot of little shops built off of the sides of the bridge. all of the shops are basically jewelry shops, and it was said that the term bankruptcy was started here. when a merchant couldn't pay his debts ("banco"), the table that held his goods ("rotto") would be broken. this led to the term "banco rotto," which means broken table and it evolved from there to "banca rotta," which means broken bank. also, this is the only bridge that survived world war ii because hitler gave direct orders to not destroy.

ponte vecchio

on the way to the bridge there are these chains on the side of the road that have a bunch of locks on them. they're from couples who bought a lock as a symbol of their love and locked it to the chain and threw the key in the river. i guess it means that they threw away the keys to their hearts and will be together forever?

locks!

darth vador

ponte vecchio

this is what the other side of ponte vecchio looks like

the group on ponte vecchio

view from ponte vecchio

after ponte vecchio we hiked up the biggest hill i have ever seen in my life to the capucci museum. this was an ok dress sculpture museum. i liked the first dress a lot and some of the stuff was cool, but it wasn't the greatest thing in the world. i was more excited for ferragamo later.

capucci museum

i did really like this flower dress

potential wedding dress?

i think not.

tree frog

we were free for lunch after capucci, but had to meet back up at the duomo to go see the david. you aren't allowed to take pictures in here, but he is still the same as always. big, white, huge hands and feet, really cool.

after this was santa croce. santa croce is the church attached to the leather school. this church is home to the tombs of michelangelo and galileo. we were given the option to either go do whatever, or go inside and see the tombs. i went inside, duh. i was a little sad though because they were restoring the entire wall that michelangelo's tomb was on, so our view wasn't great. but there are figures sitting around his tomb that represent the architect, painter, and sculpture.

inside of santa croce

michelangelo's tomb

galileo's tomb

the courtyard

last thing we did on wednesday was go to the leather school. we got to watch a guy make some coasters which was interesting. they are also not a factory, but a workshop. so they make everything by hand. it was pretty expensive, but really fun to see how they make the bags and to learn how to tell the difference between different types of leather.

entrance to the leather school

day two was awesome. we started out at the ferragamo museum, which was the best morning activity ever. you aren't allowed to take pictures inside of the museum, but courtney snuck a picture of the color exhibit they had going on. it was fascinating, of course! we got to see how he would make shoes back in the 30's (and still today) with wooden moulds of feet. he didn't want to use machines to mass produce, so he would make a wooden mould of a foot and spend time actually shaving off the wood and sanding it down. we got to see his moulds for audrey hepbourn and many other famous people. there was also an entire room dedicated to the movie australia because ferragamo did the costume shoes for the movie.

obsessed

really awesome color exhibit

i love ferragamo!

after ferragamo we went to the uffizi. you aren't allowed to take pictures inside of this giant museum, but it was good. i was tired, so it was difficult walking through, but i still enjoyed it. some fun things to see inside are the creation of venus and the medusa. next was lunch and then we were free. we ate and hung out in the leather market until we needed to move to our new hostel. i found some 5 euro pashminas! jackpot!

heather, cydney, courtney, kelly, and i checked in to our new hostel and finally could finish downloading the season finale of the bachelor (i don't want to talk about it...). then we got ready for heather's birthday dinner and met up with courtney's friend, eliza, who took us to another fun restaurant. it's called trattorie zaza and it was really cool. i got the chicken in a truffle sauce with potatoes. amazing.

ben affleck eats here!
me, kelly, and cydney out for heather's birthday

ben & jerry's! i got phish food and cookie dough

next up: paris. get ready because it was out of control.