Good Thing I Wore My Tackies!

After another cardio session and a quick breakfast, I got ready to meet up with Alex, a classmate of mine from high school. I realised two things on my way to the train station, where we were planned to meet up: I am severely locked on French timing mode, as well as Parisian walking mode. (Coincidientally, Alex would later tell me that Italians are more or less very laid back.) In any case, I made it to the train station my expected 10 minutes late (though perhaps this may attributed to Albion time) and realised a third thing: trying to find Alex at a busy train & bus station (Santa Maria Novella, S.M.N.) without cell phones would be a pretty hectic task. However, Alex found me (as his bus is apparently the only one that arrives on other side of the bus drop-offs) and we were on our way.

Alex is currently studying about 20 minutes outside of Florence, taking classes in the villa and his classmates are staying at, and travelling in and out of Italy almost every weekend. Tough life for us off-campus students, yebo? With this said, he was an amazing tour guide and even though we found ourselves not where he quite expected, I wasn't any the wiser. Today, I think, was my first "wow, I'm a tourist" day.

Our first stop was to see David (the statue) and so we headed off to the Galleria dell'Academia. No photos allowed, so all I can really say (without even trying to do every piece of artwork justice) is that this Florentine art is some pretty amazing stuff. Wow, did I really relegate centuries of artwork to 'stuff'? In all sincerity, it was truly mind-boggling that people took all this time to paint or chisel, and their masterpieces were right there, right in front of me. For all my Parisian classmates and those who know about the term, beuf, I would also like to say that I have never seen more beuf poses and expressions in one museum at one time (and this was a pretty small one!). And, then, there he was: David. What many call the most perfect statue, I was in awe with how anyone could sculpt like that, let alone be the ones who were responsible for bringing this massive piece of artwork into the building. Of another interesting (though, random) note, I saw a lady cleaning one of the paintings. Her cleaning tool of choice?: a Swifter brush.

Since I couldn't take any photos of David, we headed off to find one of the replicas located elsewhere in Florence. We passed through either Piazzalo Degli Uffiso or Palazzo Vecchio, I think (thanks to me not having anything to write on, once again), then stopped for a wonderful view of from the Ponte Vecchio (including the interesting shade of green of the river). We continued on to the site of a church, where supposedly one of the best views of Florence can be found. Lo, and behold, Alex demonstrated his vast (and dare I say random?) wealth of Florentine knowledge, pointing out Aspen trees and sharing some of his study abroad stories as we climbed up (and down) the wrong hill, and finally up the right one. The second hill consisted of a stepped path (as opposed to the slightly steep one, reminiscent of my Québec voyage two winters ago), and we finally made it to the top (I told Alex I probably shouldn't have done that cardio earlier in the morning). It wasn't the church, but the lookout point nevertheless offerred a great look over Florence. Then, after taking photos of David (oh yeah, that's where an iron(?) replica of David was located), Alex had the brilliant idea of walking up the stairs to the church he had been thinking about, the Church of San Miniato al Monte; did I mention this idea was brilliant? I got an even better shot of Florence, and also happened to notice that a large group to my right were all French. We went inside the church, I took more photos (many of which will be on-line soon enough), and then we headed back down.

Hungry by this point, I suggested we have lunch and so we stopped in a little bistro and per Alex's suggestion, tried a panini sandwich which consisted of lettuce, fresh mozzarella and prosciutto. And it was amazing! (Though, I still think the French win in the bread category.)

At this point now filled a bit, Florence decided to make us burn some of that off by giving us wonderful weather (I'm quite surprised with how much I'm enjoying the weather here) and many a mini-hill to climb in the Boboli Gardens, the background of the Pitit Palace. (ps/ I'd compare the Church of San Miniato al Monte closest to Montmartre, and these gardens as closest to those of Versailles.) If I'm not mistaken, all of the statues were Pompei-inspired or, at the very least, old. The most interesting pieces, however, were two modern statues that seemed to have been randomly dropped there. One of them reminded me of the face one can find in Tuilleries, and the other reminded us of a (white) blood cell. On our way out of the gardens, I saw a giant obelisk supported on the shells of four turtle (figures) and perhaps the world’s largest ‘bathtub’ (at least, that’s what it looked like).

As we were now nearing the time that Alex had to leave (since he has his Italian language course in the evenings), I asked him where the best gelato in Florence is. Like the great Florentine student he is, he knew of a place to go, and en route also stumbled upon the leather market he had mentioned hours beforehand (the name of which is the Piazza del Mercato Nuovo). We ended up going to Grom, where I got limone and cioccolata extranoir gelato in a grande (though, in American terms was a small or, just barely, a medium) cup.

We finally split off at S.M.N. Alex went to the right, and still having some tourist left in me, went left. I decided to take the underground system in place under the intersection (which can get extremely hectic) by S.M.N. and found many a shop (didn’t buy anything!) and the exit to the other side of the street. Once on the other side, I went into the Church of Santa Maria Novella. I first prayed for a bit in one of the chapels then went to the main church (i.e., the tourist part) and once again unable to take photos, toured the open space and the Florentine artwork adorning the walls, as well as the main altar.

At the end of my tour, I made my way to S.M.N. to check if a price difference existed between using a Fast Ticket machine and buying a ticket directly from those at the ticket window. I didn’t get a direct answer, but I definitely bought my ticket to Rome for a lot less than I had expected to pay! Great luck in hand, I headed back to the hostel and took a very long nap. I eventually woke up and had dinner (Ravioli al pomadoro—spinach and ricotta filled—and pineapple juice, 4,80 €) in the hostel restaurant. The pasta was a bit too al dente for my liking, so perhaps I’ll have my best pasta ever, in Rome. Following dinner, I watched Lucky Number Slevin, then returned to my room to look through photos and eventually fall asleep.

Speaking of photos, I would like to offer the day's "True Life" statement. True life: I have taken 430 photos and 1 little video since I arrived in Italy, took 157 during my Florentine tour with Alex, including 4 different panoramic sets, have 447 files on my card in total, and have only 245 left. True life, part 2: I still have 4 days in Italy.