Day 6

Our first full day in Florence!  We woke up early enough to see merchants setting up for that days market which goes on for blocks and blocks all around the city.  Our first stop was the wonderful Duomo with its beautiful dome, bell tower, and baptistery.  All of these structures are studied over and over again in art history, so it was amazing to finally see and experience them in real life.  And the pictures in the text books definitely do not do them any justice.  Around the Duomo, there were many gypsies begging for money, which made me a little uneasy about pickpocketing, because I knew that was common in this area.  After discussing the Duomo, we all made our way to the Ufizzi art museum a few blocks away.  This museum contains a lot more famous art history icons including Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and Primavera.  Also in this museum are lots of artworks by Caravaggio, a famous renaissance artist, and Raphael and Michelangelo.  One of my favorite Renaissance pieces, Titian’s Venus of Urbino is housed in this museum, which I could not tear my eyes off of.  Overall, I never spent so much time in an art museum before, with an exception of course to the Art Institute.  And in the end, I could not help but buy many beautiful post cards in the gift shop.  After several hours in this museum, we went to (surprise) another museum, this one famous for containing Donatello’s David statue.  However, after the Ufizzi, I was pretty museumed out, so I could only handle a small amount of this museum.  I think that was the case for most of us, because shortly after, we made our way to a café for lunch.  This café was nice because the menu was in both English and Italian, which was exciting because they had so many options to choose from.  I ended up ordering a grilled vegetable dish with melted mozzarella and basil, which was incredible.  From lunch all the way until dinner, I spent the rest of the day wandering Florence on my own, one of my new favorite activities to do in Italy.  I of course visited every book store and supermarket that I came across.  I also explored the market that we saw being set up that morning and got two gorgeous scarves.  After a few hours of wandering, I stumbled upon this amazing chocolate festival taking place in the middle of a piazza.  I am no chocolate fanatic, but this was the most breathtaking experience.  Under the biggest tent I had ever scene, there were countless chocolate vendors showing off there beautiful creations and offering delicious samples.  I tried to document the experience with as many photographs as I could.  I saw chocolate that looked like cheese.  Chocolate that towered to the ceiling.  Chocolate in every color, shape, size.  I also could not believe the crowd that this festival attracted.  The piazza was packed with people, and lots of Americans I noticed.  I ended up splurging on some decadent strawberries with warm dark chocolate drizzled over them.  Trust me, this snack was perfection.  As if that dessert was not enough for the day, later that night after dinner, a group of us went out for some before-bed gelato.  The place we ended up at had the most flavors I had seen yet: kiwi, melon, mango, rose, nutella, were all new flavors from what I had seen so far.  However, I had to go with my trusty deep plum berry gelato-sorbet.  On our way back to the hotel, we noticed a carousel in the middle of piazza.  We decided to give it a ride.  At least now I can say I rode on a merry-go-round in the middle of Florence!