traveling through rain in Firenze

Three of my roommates and I traveled to Florence Saturday morning. It rained the whole day so it made it hard to enjoy the sites. We first went to the Uffizi, and after waiting in line over an hour and paying an outrageous fee we finally saw the most famous museum in Italy. It was worth it, we saw Boticelli's Birth of Venus, along with his other works, Da Vinci, Caravaggio, and countless other artists. From here we went to the famous Duomo where Brunelleschi built the dome, which was the largest dome built.



We ended up meeting Andrea's old roommate from Ames and ate dinner together. On Sunday we knew we wanted to see the Davids. I wanted to see Donatellos and the rest of the group wanted to see Michelangelos and they are both in different museums. We were going to split up but ended up just doing both. I was impressed with the size of Michelangelo's David (17 feet tall), but I really enjoyed Dontallelos. His David seemed much more alive and striking. It was the first nude shown in Western culture since antiquity and it caused a lot of uproar because of its sensuality and its feminine qualities. We also saw Ghiberti and Brunelleschi's bronze doors they carved for a competition. I've always liked Brunellschi's better even though Ghiberti's won, but seeing them in person I felt Ghiberti's worked much better as a composition and was much more cohesive. Yay for seeing artwork in real life! We spent time in the market after the museums and actually walked inside of the Duomo. The outside was so ornate and decorated while the inside was very simple and plain, I liked the contrast of this. We trained it home Sunday night and now I'm celebrating my birthday on this monday by doing homework. ya ya.