I met the man of my dreams...

Mar. 29/07

We spent the morning book our trains and hostels for the next week and sorting out details. Then we headed out to see the city of Florence. We started at the Galleria dell'Accademia (where the statue of David, by Michelangelo is kept). The line was long...hours long. So we decided to try again tomorrow. The next plan was to go to the Duomo (the big church). It was only a few blocks away, and it was beautiful. The outside was decorated with lots of different colours of marble, pinks, white, blues. See photos (when I get around to adding them). We got inside, but unfortunately after the Sagrada Familia, everything else pales in comparison. But we were very lucky to be around at 12:00. There were 2 bell towers and that is one thing I really like about churches...the bells are beautiful. While in the gift shop, I happened to be flipping through a book (ok, I admit, it was a kid's book) and noticed that it mentioned a museum of the History of Science, right here in Florence. Well, that was suddenly the next stop. It was great. Not only is Italy about art, it's also the place where a lot of the main scientists of the time made some incredible discoveries. Astronomy, physics, medicine...

Well, that was a fantastic musuem. I loved it, and it wasn't art (finally). We also met one of the interpreters...who just happened to be from (yup, what a conicidence) Edmonton. She studied at UofA, and visted RH, and is now the English programmer at the museum. I'm so jealous. We got to see Galileo's middle finger, though I have yet to figure out why it was kept and also his telescope, which is of more scientific value.

Mar 30/07

Sigh, I saw the most incredible man today...We dropped our bags off at the train station for our afternoon departure and then went to stand in line. We arrived at 9:30 and were already a ways back from the door...2 hrs in fact. By the time we got inside, we were very happy to finally be there. We looked at the first rooms of paintings and admired the work. Then we got to the sculptures. The first 4 were sculptures that Michelangelo had not had time to complete and they were incredile. Ironically, they were part of the "Prisoner" series, and they looked like they were trapped in the rock, straining to get free.

Then we saw him, and was he ever incredible. I've never seen any peice of art so beautiful. He was 5m tall, and perfect. Every detail was exact and showed the strength and intelligence that Michelangelo wanted to portray. I can't describe how amazing it was. Nothing would compare, and (unfortunately) for the poor artists whose stuff was down the next few halls, we didn't even see it after seeing David. It was hard to look at any art and not have it come up short.

We were not able to take photos in the museum so we went to an outdoor piazza where there is a copy of David that we could photograph *yes Kristie, I did take a photo of his ass...perfect ass). In the piazza, we also found a number of other sculptures that were great.

And then we went to Rome, leaving our newfound love behind to be admired by millions of people everyday.