Italy: Florence

Here's Florence!

Florence is a nice city, much more compact than Rome, with some of the old-town style of Venice. After getting off the train it was a pretty quick walk to the star of the city, Santa Maria del Fiore! It's pretty famous among anyone who's ever taken an art history class for it's dome, designed by Brunelleschi, because it was an architectural innovation. But personally, I was just awestruck by the fancy facade! It's a gorgeous building, all marble and colors and patterns.

Another thing you might remember from Art History 101 are these doors to the Baptistery of Santa Maria del Fiore. Brunellschi and Ghiberti were two of the artists competing for the right to design all the gold squares on these doors, and Ghiberti won. After that, Brunelleschi beat Ghiberti out in a competition to design said dome.

This isn't the real David, they keep that one in a room in one of the museums. But this one still looked really cool!

Unfortunately, we had a pretty lame ending to our Florence trip. After Axton and Lesley left to go back to England, we took a pretty long bus ride to our hostel. We found it after a little while (it had a different name than the one listed online), and it was LOCKED. The gate was shut, and the door was blocked with a table and had a sign on it that said "No Entry..." or no entrada or something. We tried to go around the back but it was all gated off, and I was starting to freak out. It wasn't in a super nice neighborhood, and it was past 8. We went back to the front of the building and saw this sign (that I couldn't even read from that distance) that said reception was closed from 8-9. Okay, okay, that's fine.Oh wait, if you check in after 9 you have to pay an extra 10 euro! That's like, the cost of the room. 

We were so fed up after that ordeal that we just caught a train back to Travis's house. That meant we had to miss out on the museums, which I was really sad about. I cried.

Even though we had to cut the trip short, Florence was a beautiful city, and I had a good time! There was this one beautiful boutique, but the only thing I could afford was a ring, it was all so expensive!