So it's been a crazy couple of weeks trying to get moved into my dorm room in London. I've officially been here a week and I can't say it's been the easiest week, but I've made it and classes start on Monday. I promised pictures and stories from Florence, so better late than never!
Two weeks ago I took the new fast rail to Florence on a two day solo backpacking adventure! I left pretty early in the morning so I could arrive before lunch. A woman in the station realized I was American and had her adorable little girl (maybe 5 or 6 years old) come up to me and tell me her name and her favorite color in English since she was trying to teach her. Super cute!
When I got off the train I wasn't really sure where to begin, so I started by trying to find my hostel to check in, just to make sure everything was set for the night. The hostel, David Inn, was pretty nice, considering it was a hostel. The location was decent as well, just north of all of the main attractions.
This is the view from my room. You can see the Duomo and the top of Santa Maria del Fiore (which I'll talk about later).
I was super hungry by the time I left the hostel, so I decided to just find somewhere close, quick, and cheap. I ended up picking something that was neither quick, nor cheap, but it was delicious. So it is pretty awkward going into restaurants (especially nice ones) by yourself, but I'm an awkward person so I guess I'm used to the feeling.
Here's the pizza I ordered. Cherry tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, and basil. Delicious. I did eat almost the entire thing... the only thing I didn't eat was half of the crust. It was a pretty big pizza too, but delicious.
My plan for Monday was to take one of the two free tours that this random website advertised here. Although it may not seem like it, this website is legit. I've found equivalent websites for other European cities as well. Basically you just show up to the location listed on the site and meet up with all of the other people awkwardly looking around and wondering if they've foolishly been tricked into meeting up for some fantastical tour or not. It's great if you're on a budget (which I am) and you just tip your tour guides at the end. The tour wasn't bad at all. It's a really great way to just get acquainted with what's important to see and a little history of what's around you. I'll definitely be using tours like these again in the future. It's also a good way to meet other English speaking travelers.
On my way to the start of the tour, I went past the Santa Maria del Fiore. I'm going to be very honest right here, when I first saw this church, I actually said "....holy shit..." aloud. This is the type of building that I can post pictures of but until you're standing right in front of it, you can't understand the full experience. I guarantee that my photos do not do this building justice... It's so huge that you probably can't take a picture of all of it from the ground. I'll show you my attempts at capturing the size and detail of this building.
This building is MASSIVE.
You can't tell from my photos but every square inch of this building is detailed.
I'm not going to say much more about it because what can I really say? It's amazing. The history of the building doesn't seem very important because it's just so hard to imagine this being created by people. The amount of people waiting outside in line was also pretty ridiculous. I moved on to catch my tour from Santa Maria Novella. The tour was all about the Medici family and the history of their political prominence in Florence. It was a pretty interesting tour and it definitely helped me to understand the way that Italians felt about the Medici family some more. I'd always seen Medici related things around, like tributes and buildings everywhere, but I'd never known whether the were liked or disliked as powerful figures and what exactly they did. The tour answered a lot of these questions for me.
Starting point on the tour, Santa Maria Novella.
Doors to the Florence Baptistry, appropriately dubbed "Gates of Paradise" by Michelangelo. These are replicas because the originals are kept safe in a museum. Apparently these doors took 21 years to finish.
One of the Medici plus the Uffizi Castle (There's probably a better name that I can't think of).
The Florentines have all sorts of crazy inside jokes and strange stories. Urban legend says that Michelangelo carved this face of the man who criticized the size of David's nose into the wall of the castle. The portrait was such a likeness that the man couldn't complain about Michelangelo's artist judgment and left him alone.
It was difficult to take an impressive photo of Ponte Vecchio but here's my best shot.
The tour ended after crossing Ponte Vecchio and I knew where I wanted to go after that. Last semester I took a class on the history of the book and one place that always showed up in my research was the Biblioteca Nationale. It contains some of the coolest and oldest manuscripts and it's supposed to be very beautiful. The one thing I wanted to see more than anything else was the inside of this library so I walked over.
Such a huge library!
Unfortunately this is all I would be seeing of the library, as it's closed to tourists and anybody who doesn't have a special pass. Although understandable, this was pretty devastating. One day I WILL get to see the inside of this beautiful library. I just need to get that pass...
I decided to console myself with some gelato so I went off on a quest to find some. On my way back I stopped to take a few photos of a pretty sexy man.
Dat ass.
The most famous naked guy in all the land (or at least a replica of him), David.
I didn't go into any of the super famous art museums, as I'm poor and I only had two days in Florence, but I think I got to see some pretty cool stuff. I got my gelato which made me feel better about my library failure, and went to look at some other books in a book tent that was open in Piazza della Repubblica. I found my new favorite book.
When I have kids, this will be their bedtime story. And they will never misbehave again. I read this book.. it's only like 11 pages long. But they will be terrified of not listening to mom and dad. It's also a super adorable book... It may be going on my Christmas list this year. It's not religiously biased or anything, it's just like a cute way to introduce children to the Inferno but I laughed so much while reading this. SO good.
After all of this walking around with my backpack on, I think I had to call it a day. I was pretty exhausted so I started wandering back to the hostel. After chilling out for a few minutes and regrouping, I headed back out to find what was again supposed to be a quick and cheap dinner. Once again, it was not.
I got risotto with mushrooms. This was actually not that great... probably the first time I've been disappointed with a meal in Italy.
This is also when I discovered two things: 1) that I draw older American couples to me. 2) Almost all of the shirts I brought to Europe are Wellesley related. I counted and 6/10 shirts are from Wellesley.
A nice couple from California chatted to me in the restaurant about their travels around Italy which was really nice, and they asked me about Wellesley. It was nice to see some friendly faces and on their way out of the restaurant they called me Madame President and told me they'd see me on the news in a few years. Does everyone at Wellesley get this response from people, or just me? I'm a computer scientist for goodness sake!
But I went back to the hostel after eating and the person working the desk had changed shifts. The only place to get Wifi was in the main lobby so I sat down to check email and such. I ended up talking to the guy who worked there, Stefano, for like 3 hours. It was fascinating and a great conversation. He'd traveled a lot so his English was really good and he had a lot of interesting perspectives. He told me how things are different in Florence from other regions in Italy and how it was different from the US. He had a lot of insight on fun things to do and see (which I definitely took advantage of). We talked about how technology has changed things and the role it plays in our lives. It was a really nice part of the trip I think. After a while, I called it a night.
I shared my hostel room with 2 Australian guys and a Brazilian(? I can't remember but I'm pretty sure this is right) girl. It was no problem, everything went well and everyone kept to themselves. I wish I could have taken a picture from my bed (didn't want to seem creepy), but the view from where I was laying was perfect. The Duomo was all lit up and gorgeous in the night.
I woke up early the next morning and decided to get a head start on all the other tourists to go inside of Santa Maria del Fiore, so I got there at around 9. It was probably unnecessary to get there that early but I was in the front of the line and I could sit on the stairs and just look around which was nice. While I was waiting, two older couples from Wisconsin happened to join me. The two husbands sat next to me while their wives explored and did some shopping. We talked about traveling and the economy and all sorts of random stuff. We were joined by an Australian couple later on and talked more about these things with them. It's strange how the one thing that can bring Americans together is being in a country far from home. If I'd encountered these same people in a grocery store or mall, we would never have exchanged glances, let alone words. It's a pretty interesting thing. I've also found that people love to talk to you when you're traveling alone... they think you're brave and adventurous. It's interesting to be perceived as brave because I might not necessarily describe myself in that way. After we went inside the church, we all kind of stuck together. After, they asked me if I wanted to go to Sienna with them for the day. I would have loved to have done that, but unfortunately I'd already booked my train ticket back to Florence and didn't have another night at the hostel. Regretfully, I parted from them and made my way back to Santa Maria Novella for the second tour.
The second tour covered a lot of the same ground as the first tour, but ended instead at the Basilica of Santa Croce.
Many famous people are buried here: Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli. And yes, that is the Star of David in the middle of this church. There's a funny story about that. The tour guide told us that a Jewish architect won a contest to build this church and added in the star without consent. Nobody knew until the scaffolding came down. People were pretty infuriated, but he made his case that Christianity had its roots in Judaism so the people forgave him. When he died, some people wanted to bury him in the church with the other great people of his time, but others were opposed because he was Jewish and therefore shouldn't be buried in the church. Urban legend has that they settled by burying him half in and half out of the church under the front step. Italian logic.
There's also a big tribute to Dante outside of the church. But we'll get to Dante later.
Near where the tour ended, there as a restaurant that the guy at the hostel recommended to me. I should have taken a photo, but essentially it was the super classy Italian version of Subway. You got some focaccia bread and they put a ton of amazing Italian ingredients inside, all for about 5 euros. The lines were out the door and they had two shops right across from each other. I just went in, told the guy I was a vegetarian, and then he made me this:
It was huge and I could only eat like half of it. Amazing.
Another thing this place was known for was being able to serve yourself really good Tuscan red wine on the street for 2 euros. The guy at my hostel told me I had to try it, so of course, I did. It was surprisingly good considering how warm it was. After eating I had one main thing that I wanted to do before leaving Florence, and that was to go to Dante's house! It was turned into a museum.
So the museum was actually pretty disappointing. They honestly didn't have anything in there that was solidly connected to Dante or very historical. They had one illuminated manuscript... supposedly one of the oldest ones known about. It belonged to Dante's brother or something like that... but I've held similar Dante manuscripts at Wellesley, so I think it's fair to say I wasn't impressed by much in there. There were a few interesting art pieces dedicated to Dante that I can share though.
This was made out of wood... it was really pretty. There were other ones hanging on the walls but this featured the first canto of the Inferno.
After I made it out of the Dante museum, I was exhausted from being on my feet with a backpack on for two days straight so I thought it was time to head back towards the train station. There's a historical pharmacy where monks made apothecary type products near the train station, so I thought it'd check it out, but the tourism and history of the place made it so expensive and modernized that it lost it's appeal. I went and bought some sweets and gifts from a small shop near there (I had a full comprehensible conversation in Italian with the shop keeper and I was so proud of myself! It's the little things, when you're trying to learn a language, that excite you). I spent the next hour and a half chilling on some benches and I got a cappuccino until my train came!
My adventures in Florence were amazing! I enjoyed getting to visit and see and going by myself was a good experience I think. I had to learn to be independent and resourceful as I didn't have a phone or any electronics that could really function with me. I used a map and navigated the old-fashioned way and I think that's something everyone should do while traveling. Turn off the phone, put away the GPS and take the chance of getting lost. What's the worst that can happen? You have to have a little faith in humanity and ask for directions. It's a beautiful thing to do if you're losing that faith I think.... meeting those wonderful people on my trip was probably one of the best parts. Although I missed my friends and wished they were there, if they were maybe my experience would have been much different. Maybe I would have learned less or missed out on something I wanted to see.
My last few days in Italy mostly consisted of me catching up on work I needed to do before coming to England, like ordering bedding and fixing up my resume. I know it's super lame and I could have been going out to Venice or Ravenna, or somewhere else equally amazing, but I think it was healthier for me to just take a few days to sit down and get myself organized, considering how little time I'd had off all summer to do that.
I just want to once again thank Chiara and her family for letting me stay in their house for so long and their amazing hospitality. It was an amazing experience and I learned so much from spending time there. The food was amazing and I even got a few recipes from Chiara's mom, which are now some of my most prized possessions. I can't wait to try cooking up some mushrooms and I already tried a salmon pasta recipe this week. I'm really looking forward to seeing Chiara again soon.
Since arriving in London, things have been a little hectic but I've managed to fit a few fun adventures in there. I'll share a few more photos and some stories in my next blog post, which I will write very soon.
Thanks for reading everyone!
