Firenze: Day 1

We left! We finally left! I have been waiting to go to Italy since I read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown when I was in high school. The descriptions of all the churches and religious history fascinated me and enticed me to come to explore the sites from the book, among other things. It also helped my desire to visit even more because I just took a history class last semester. We took off on Friday afternoon after seeing patients for half of the day for the airport. I actually can say, I didn't mind the flight. Usually, I have to struggle with the lack of leg room and it is a terrible experiece. However, this time i was on the front row of economy and I got as much leg room as I wanted. It made the 8 hour flight manageable and I didn't want to kill myself the whole time. We landed in Amsterdam and then caught a 2 hour flight to Florence (or as the Italians call it Firenze) which didn't have leg room. We all survived and landed in Florence. It was a very small airport with only 3 baggage claims. We grabbed our bags and took off down the street in a cab headed for the Hotel Morandi. It is a quaint, converted convent that definitly had some character. It was a great place of refuge especially because it wan't near all the touristy sites, which gave us peace, solitude and the ability to sleep at night. After dropping our bags off in the hotel room at 1 pm, we assesed what activities we could squeeze in before we fell asleep due to a severe lack of sleep. We chose a visit to the Academia musem (where the famous statue of David is housed) and walked in. I was in awe of the majesty of the sculptures in the room. It starts with "The Prisoners", which were early works of Michelangelo. They are deemed as such because these men are stuck in the stone, unable to be fully uncovered. These sculptures line the corridor on both sides and the end of the corridor is where David is standing.

We were all eager to see the statue of David. Ron had taken a sculpting class in college and had done a report on the statue. He recollected his experience in the class and we were able to discuss his experience in working with clay and marble. Kristy had just read "The Agony and the Ecstasy" by Irving Stone. This was a biographical novel, close to 800 pages in length and gave her a more intimate view of the artist Michaelangelo. Lauren was eager to see it because it was famous. The picture shown here was captured by her camera before she learned tht photography was prohibited. We visited the market to look for fresh produce, and also stopped in at Santa Maria Novella. While there we took the crucifixes of Brunelleschi and Giotto, Massaccio's "Trinity" and Ghirlandaio's frescoes. We could not find a place to eat dinner . .. so we settled for Gelatto. We retired to our rooms at Hotel Morandi Alla Crocetta about 7pm...exhausted and in need of sleep! Our hotel used to be a Dominican convent.