Florence is... Florence

When I think of Florence... I think of... not all that much. I dunno. To me, it was just another Italian city. I guess it's main claim to fame is the renaissance art.
So all over Italy, especially in train stations there are these ads, everywhere! for this drink called campari. It comes in a little red glass, and it looks like soda or something. I thought, hey, I'm just as susceptible to mass advertising as anyone else, why not give it a shot, plus I can keep the bottle, because it looked pretty cool. Most disgusting drink I've ever tasted. I had about one shot of it, could barely handle it, gave Matt a taste, who refused to drink any more, so here's a picture of me muscling down the last of it. As you can see, it's painful.
Ok, onto actual tourist things. We checked out this church that I can't remember the name of. It is the 2nd largest cathedral in the world or Europe or something, after St. Peters. Having just come from St. Peters, it was hard to be impressed. What really stood out though was the dome. The construction of the dome was really quite amazing. It was done with a series of posts put into the side of the thing and entirely without scaffolding. Apparently the workers were so afraid of the safety of the structure that the architect actually had to jump up and down on the beams to prove to them it was safe. Quite a cool dome (Italy has plenty).

Afterward, we checked out this Leonardo da Vinci museum, that was kinda a low budget thing, not like a main museum. Still, I thought it was awesome, they had many reconstructions of da Vinci's machines are they are like 1000 years ahead of his time. If only he had lived today...


So we went to this one place that was recommended by Let's Go (our bible by this point), but the menu ending up being entirely in Italian, so I just impulsively ordered something that sounded nice in Italian, and ended up with Cow stomach. Not too good.


I think this is the only picture I took in the Uffizi (Florence's most renowned museum), as camera's were not allowed. I thought it was hilarious because there's a red button on the metal detector that just says don't push. Which is always just funny. But yeah, the Uffizi was possibly the most boring museum we've been to so far, and the audio guide was no help. We suffered through the rooms, and finally left when we felt we had our money's worth.

Afterwards we wandered around the city, and saw this replica of the statue of David, which is in the Museo d' Academia, which we meant to see, but didn't really get around to. Later we saw another replica of David, but in bronze, so we left Florence having seen two replicas, but not the real thing. Oh well, I gives me a reason to return to Florence, when I otherwise would have none.

I feel like kind of a loser, posting this picture of my ipod, but it was really quite cool. I was sitting at the balcony, listening to some Dave Brubek, while watching people go by, and it was quite a relaxing situation. One of those that just kind of makes you appreciate life. Also the ipod on the shelf against the background had a nice composition, but I don't think I really captured it.

This picture is out of place, but I guess I actually took two pictures while in the Uffizi. This is out of one of the windows, kind of a nice view of the city and Florence's main bridge, Ponte Vecchio. (sp?)



And here's a shot of while talking across that bridge with the million other tourists. At the end of trip, in a Rome-esk style, we went up this fat set of stairs that overlooks the city.