Florence: Day 3, Part 1

I made it a point to write down what we did every day in order to make blogging easier. Let me tell you, the lists look short but man there is a lot to say. So now you know how much I love you.

Oh, and a little side note, you can click on the photos to make them bigger and then click on them again to magnify. They will look clearer if you do this.

After 3 1/2 motion sick hours in the back of the bus we started our tour in Florence at Santa Croce. Darth Vader greeted us on our walk to the church. The amount of graffiti is really unfortunate. 

The church is made of bricks. The marble facade you see is just decoration on top of the bricks. At first I wasn't sure about the Italian's use of color on the outside of the churches we saw. I guess that's because it's new to me. 

Tombs in Santa Croce. Clockwise from top left: Galileo, Michaelangelo, Machiavelli, and Dante (which is actually an empty tomb). Check out the frescoes in the picture of Galileo's tomb. The tour guide said that the whole church (or much of it) was painted like this but they plastered over it at some point.  I just couldn't get over them plastering over it. So some of the frescoes have been uncovered. I thought the "plain" walls were beautiful in a way. I mean, every church we went into was completely covered on the inside with statues, marble, and frescoes. 

Then we walked to Piazza della Signoria after passing the building where Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. That's a normal everyday thing for some people. Isn't that wild? In Piazza della Signoria there is the town hall which looks like a castle, 

as well as a copy of Michaelangelo's David (top left) and an open air museum of statues including The Rape of the Sabine Women  (bottom right) (and rape meaning abduction), which blows me away with the motion depicted in the marble. Perseus with the Head of Medusa (bottom left) and Hercules and Nessus were also impressive. 

Next we walked to the Duomo which features Brunelleschi's dome and the Baptistery. You can check out the pictures on those links because I really didn't get good pictures of them since I thought we'd have time to go back. I am very very sad to say that we didn't make it inside of either. We also didn't make it to the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo which houses the Gates of Paradise. I was really hoping to see those. We went on the optional tour to see the real David (which you can't photograph) at the Accademia. David is incredible. We couldn't imagine how anyone could pass up seeing it. The two copies are nothing like seeing the real thing. It was also awesome to see Michaelangelo's unfinished statues. Here's a great article about David and the unfinished sculptures.

I am going to end this post here because I am hungry and I need to go to the store for some Greek yogurt. It's been 12 days since I've had a frozen chocolate chip cookie dough ball and I am phening. Really, there's just so much more to say about Florence and you are probably on Italy overload right about now.