Florence : :

BEFORE

       Sitting next to a packed backpack in a quite house. Answering Mom’s latest text. Boarding passes are printed, folded, and slotted between the laminated pages of my passport. Everything is set out for tomorrow morning as needed and roommate Chris just cracked his first snore of the night, there will be many more to follow. Some nights I use the earplugs, others I don’t let it bother me and I just think until I fall asleep.
Excited to travel. Total travel about 3.30 hours but it will take much more. I will be there for 4 days but it will feel like less I’m sure...

AFTER

        Well unfortunately my perfect attendance for class was broken this past Thursday but I assure you it was for good cause. One bus ride, plane ride, bus ride again, and one final train ride landed me in Florence! Chad and I were set to meet with friends from PLNU and TCU. Excited to see how this city compared with Barcelona we took off down the main street and one dog leg left later, there we were at the base of the Duomo. You never get a second chance at a first impression and Florence made sure it was well prepared for me. We dropped our bags at our friend’s house and took off on a hike across town, over the infamous bridge Ponte Vecchio and up to the Piazzale Michelangelo, which overlooks beautiful Florence. I guess it had been raining everyday the past week but wanting to keep up the first impression Florence turned off the waterworks out of curtsey of its visitors. We were treated to a beautiful sunset that my words will never do justice and as I sat on the steps listening to a local sing and play guitar with that sunset striking the Duomo a few miles away in the heart of Florence, I couldn’t help but laugh a bit inside. I am too blessed to be experiencing these things. It was another one of those “Walking Into A Dream” moment where I can look around for an hour and still not feel like I have taken it all in. The way that the green lush hillside protected us from the direct light of the sun but the city was ablaze in the sun kissed orange glow that was being painted in broad strokes across the city. No wonder they called it Firenze.

      The next “Walking Into a Dream” moment came when we ventured to Accademia museum the next day to see the infamous David. After almost going the wrong way out onto a patio we turned into a long halfway and there he stood. I’ve never been struck by a piece of art that way before and I don’t think I said anything for a good 20 minutes after I turned that corner. I tried to figure it out as I walked down the hallway until I was right under it, I walked a circle around it, I walked to the corner of the room where his eyes seemed to be fixed, I walked back down the halfway away from David to get that proper shock again, and then back up to the front, it was incredible. Maybe it was because I took that Euro History class my senior of High School and that stuff just does it for me, or maybe because David is my middle name. Whatever the cause I seemed to be transfixed and I could have stayed that way for quite a while if it hadn’t been for my travelling party standing in a circle waiting for me to move onto the next exhibit.

What? What do you mean… next? Don’t you get it…we are… here…what?

     Clearly this appeal for art wasn’t mutual among the others but I still took my sweet time gazing at the paintings of Jesus being taken down from the cross from centuries past, marveling at the details such as the spear wound in Jesus’ side or the coins on the side of the picture which must have belonged to Judas… such amazing detail which still remains relevant all these years later. Again my words can’t do it justice but it was so amazing. All of the those little slides I sat through class looking at had come to life right before my eyes, Accademia wasn’t a funny name for a Museum in Florence but it was literally right on front of me. The last room I checked out was one of sculptures, which from the second I walked in I knew they were legit because it was intoxicating. It just smelled like age in that room and mind you the smell wasn’t quite intoxicating the way you may like your girlfriend to be. Nevertheless I was struck but quite a few in that room as well, most notably the eyes of Machiavelli, I remember enjoying those readings the most in my history and philosophy classes. I walked into the gift shop to find my expecting friends waiting there patiently, I had gotten a lot out of that and had a nice peace of mind about me as I walked out… like I said, I have never been struck by art that way before. Taking pictures never really crossed my mind.

 

    The nights were all fun in Florence and entailed lots of walking, buying pizza, laughing, and even finding a back alley bakery with some of the best chocolate filled croissants I have ever had. Church bells rang out across the city often, I counted 80 rings in a row at one point, not sure what that signified. After scrambling some eggs for breakfast we spent our last day in Florence trying to reach the top of the Duomo. Shutdown! To our dismay the Duomo is closed on Sundays…but the tower next to it was open! Sometimes taking two steps at a time and realizing how out of shape all of us were, we climbed to the top. The tower was actually a pleasant surprise because it was almost just as tall and we got some really cool pictures of the Duomo.

It definitely did feel less than four days, which we were in Florence and I learned a lot. One of the more important things was to bring more than 85 euros… I had become so accustomed to living with a host family and not paying or food that this trip earned me a few IOU’s. Chad and I took our returning bus, train, flight, and buses back to downtown Barcelona and literally didn’t have more than 1euro to spare… talk about a nail biter. I kept counting and recounting my little stacks of coins on the plane to make sure that I wouldn’t be stranded at the airport, thankfully the bus driver was in a cheery mood and took my little coin collection with an understanding smile. As I walked through the rain it was a relief to be home.
Well….“Home”