Firenze Is Not A Centaur

This weekend I visited Firenze! By Firenze I mean Florence, not the awesome centaur in Harry Potter. Florence was one of the most magical places I've visited though. The art, the architecture, the markets, the food... it was like living in a dream. Our hostel looked out onto a smaller leather market next to the Uffizi Gallery. The Uffizi is where we got to see Botticelli's The Birth of Venus and La Primavera. We went to the Uffizi and another gallery, the Accademia, on Friday after we dropped off our things at the hostel. The main exhibit at the Accademia was Michelangelo's David. It was amazing! It is approximately five times larger than I ever imagined it would be and the skill of Michelangelo is just phenomenal. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos of the David. One man tried to take one while we were there and he was promptly run down by security and made to delete the photo off of his camera.

The Birth of Venus

La Primavera

 The next big thing that we did was to visit the Duomo and then walk up to the top of the dome. The inside of the church is rather plain except for the dome decoration. However, the dome's decoration and the dome itself were amazing! Although if you are at all claustrophobic I would not recommend climbing to the top of the dome, even though the views of Florence are breathtaking. After the Duomo we set off to explore the main leather market. Everything smelt so nice there! Leather from Florence is hands down the best I've ever seen. Since I was so inspired by the shopping, I made my one major purchase...shoes! I bought myself a beautiful pair of tall equestrian style black leather boots! They are so comfortable and soft; I cannot wait for Fall to actually show up in Italy! Most of the girls I went with bought leather jackets which are all beautiful and fit them perfectly. At the market we all definitely polished our bargaining skills, the vendors definitely try to sell as high as they can to unsuspecting tourists! Both nights we were there we had delicious meals. The first night we went to a little restaurant recommended by Rick Steves and had really great traditional Tuscan cuisine. We even met a travel book author and his wife who ended up buying us some Chianti wine, everyone we met in Florence was so nice! The second night we participated in an event called WineTown where we were able to do a wine tasting at different locations around the city. It was really fun! Then we went to a restaurant that was recommended to us by the people behind us in line to enter the Duomo. It was also really good! We even branched out and tried things like "black pasta" (pasta made black with squid ink). Overall, it was a very successful (ans expensive!) weekend!

I have also started planning for fall break and just booked my flights for Barcelona and Madrid! Now I just have to figure out where to go for my last days of break!