Florence Itinerary:
View from Campanile di Giotto
Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore
Ponte Vecchio
Uffizi Gallery
Botticelli’s Primavera + The Birth of Venus + Spring
Rosa Genoni’s The Spring (dress inspired by Botticelli)
Laocoön and His Sons
Galleria dell'Accademia - Statue of David (I met Diego Boneta there imitating the statue)
FLORENCE ‘15
After befriending a girl named Rachael in Venice, we decided to follow her to Florence and stay in the hostel she had picked out. It was about $13/night - absurdly cheap. “What could go wrong?” we thought.
The experience was indeed… interesting. It had no elevator so we had to climb quite a few flights of stairs with our luggage (an excellent way to work off the cappuccinos). There was just a single hallway with three small bedrooms stuffed full of rickety bunk beds (seemed off the beaten path). And, the hostel would only take payments in cash (I’m sure they were a registered business that paid their taxes). Not soon after getting settled into our room, we heard a shrill scream coming from down the hall, and learned one the rooms was infested with bedbugs. It was a classic hostel-gone-wrong scenario, but I laugh now.
While chatting with the other rattled travelers in our room, we heard someone say they were headed out to catch the sunset from the top of the bell tower. My travel companion, Cindy, immediately responded with “I like sunsets” and invited ourselves to go along with him.
It was nearing sunset, so Cindy and Rachael and I first ran to get tickets. We told Benjamin to go on without us and that we would meet him at the top. We raced up the first hundred stairs, but out of breath and badly cramping, we slowed to a more brisk stumble than sprint. At one point, there was an especially tight spiral staircase that seemed to go on forever. I started to get the illusion that I was stuck in a vortex of infinite steps and let out some crazed laughs.
But finally, sweaty and disoriented, we made it to the top, and every ache instantly faded away. There was just a gentle blush that hung over the hills in the distance, and we stood there quite a while simply taking in the expansiveness of our view. From the top of the bell tower, we could see the whole city. It stretched out in every direction, beautiful sienna colored roofs, winding streets, tiny specks of people bustling about. From the base of the bell tower, we could hear the faint singing of a violin which sealed the ambiance of it all. We waited until the sun set completely and then watched even longer as the city lit up, mirroring the night sky with twinkling lights. After we had our fill of that sight (and caught our breath again), we made our way back down to dance and sing along to the street musician, and I taught my friends to waltz and tango. Florence was magical. Bedbugs and all.
Campanile di Giotto
400 stair steps later
Ponte Vecchio
Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore