Florence, Italy

I don't want to leave..

Quick recap. Friday we arrived in time to catch then free walking tour our hostel provides. 

After the tour we found where we needed to go to get tickets for Accademia and Uffizi, the two museums we decided to shell the money out for (the thing about Florence is that a lot ofnit is churches and museums, so we have to allocate our funds, and it means I'll be back when I have more cash flow). Anyways, As we are walking down a random road searching, I look up, tap Courtney and say "look, look who it is!" ....it was The Situation...straight out of Jersey. So we snap a few pictures, and as I'm looking waiting for Snooki to pop out I hear him saying " come, eat my pizza, don't you want me to make you pizza" ... So a couple follows him and the production guy signals us back. Next thing you know we are in a back alley signing waivers. Then we are told to go get lunch on this pizza place, act like we are just normal customers, know nothing about Jersey Shore and NO pictures (I snuck one on my cell phone). So The Situation welcomes us, Vinny takes my order and money and Paulie D helps make the pizza. It was very entertaining, and I'm sure I'll be watching non stop when the show starts to see if either of us make an appearance. Court got a good moment when Paulie D gave her crap for wanting a box. 

After that we found our tickets, checked into our rooms, and headed to Accademia to see David. The thing about all these amazing museums is that they don't allow cameras (I think mostly cause they don't want flash with the paintings). But, again, I snuck a few. It doesn't matter though, the pictures do nothing to what it felt like turning the corner and seeing him standing at the end of the hallway. I have never seen such a beautiful human being in statue. Every detail, from the veins in his hands and arms to the muscle and the smoothness of his skin. I was literally in awe. We just sat staring for a while, admiring and day dreaming about what it would be like to know him. What I'm saying here is, you need to see him.

After David we hit up the supermarket to grab cheap dinner and cheap wine (because even 5 dollar wine in Italy is good). What happened next will further be known as the cheesecake incident of 2011. Basically, I got cheese bread and meat, we set up outside and after opening my wine (the cork fell apart on me so it was a mini adventure in itself) I get ready to chow. I spread some cheese on a piece of fresh bread and pop it in. Then Courtney asks how it is, and I say "it is eerily familiar to cheesecake, just not as sweet" (I thought I was getting ricotta, mind you). So she tries it and is convinced I'm eating cheesecake. I ignore it because it isn't bad especially with some meat, and keep eating. Near the end I look closer at the wrapper and see ricotta limone zappala....and we start laughing. We spend a while looking it up and trying to figure it out only to duns ricotta is a common component of Italian cheesecake dessert.... 

We had discussed going to the club the jersey shore cast was at, but we wanted to save money and it would be a 2am or later before we got back, and with an early wake up for Tuscany we stayed in. For our second day check out my last post on Tuscany in a day, I'm trying to keep these blogs to where we were at.

Sunday (today) was our day to tour Florence more. We slept in (till just after 7) got ready and headed out by 9. I enjoyednthe laid back feeling of the day, especially after the craziness of trying to get all around Rome and see everything (I don't think I mentioned it but we walked around 25 miles in 2 days). Anyways, we went and saw all the sights, and churches, and Courtney took pictures as I looked in all the camera stores we passed for something under 100 euros. We got to the famous pig market, got great pictures of us rubbing his nose for luck (I even tried to stand in the same place my mom did so many years ago), and then we look up and see a camera place. At this point we hadn't seen anything under 139 euros unless it only took regular film, so I almost didn't go in. But, alas, we did. And I found my camera! A 99 euro canon ready to go! I think our luck is turning around.

We then headed up (wayyyy up) to the Michelangelo plaza, and the best view of Florence where the bronze David is. Court was more interested in the cute little boy that wanted his food so much than our view for a while. Haha. We trekked down, found a supermarket and got bananas, a pimeto type dip with some bread crackers and chowed down before heading into the Uffizi. The Uffizi is draining. So much to see, and with only my iPad and the lonely planet tour guide book as our guide we made our was around. We saw all the big famous paintings, and it was quite interesting to seethe change in style from the 12th all the way through the 18th and 19th centuries. One of my favorites was "Leda and the swan" mostly because I didnt know the story of Zeus turning into a swan to seduce her behind her husbands back and them having children hatch from eggs. The picture perfectly depicted it. The other one that isn't famous that I "enjoyed" I believe was called "death of innocence", it was literally a huge art piece of these heathens trying to slaughter all the babies while their mothers tried to protect them. It's the first paininting I've ever really looked at and gotten that serious of an emotional effect. It was really an amazing, and kind of sickening, piece of art.

After that we were exhausted, so we got more gelato, grabbed dinner at the supermarket (I had amazing lasagna and freshhhhhh bread) and came back. Im finishing this Monday morning, cause I fell asleep, but we are headed off from Florence now, no idea when the next post will be! 

Also, the mosquitos here are bad, these little tiny things that love my blood and haven't touched Courtney! I woke up with bites up my arm, sides, and yesterday they were all over my legs from sitting outside for an hour. Needless to say, my bug spray is now staying by my side.

Oh, also, pictures are updated. I'm working on captioning them now.