Two friends and I went to Italy in Sept. It was great! Florence is beautiful, we walked everywhere and saw so much it's hard to remember it all. I drove out of Florence, around Tuscany and in Pisa and Genova. They drive like bats out of hell over there...but once I learned to drive like they did things went fine. No dents on the rental car or on any wayward Italians that got in our way.
Santa Croce is a large church (cathedral?) that houses the remains of Galileo and Michaelangelo, Machiavelli and Florence Nightingale among others. It was VERY impressive to stand in the middle of the church with Galileo on one side and Michaelangelo on the other. We're taught here not to walk on graves but that's impossible in churches where people are buried in the floor.
We saw the statue David. How someone creates by removing pieces of rock is amazing to me. Marble is everywhere in Florence, as is art. Doorknobs, corners of buildings, street signs, bridges. I liked the fact that functional things were made beautiful. Not normally a fan of the ornate style, it all felt right.
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| Santa Croce with its side courtyards and bell tower. Loved all the tile roofs. |
There was a lot of trompe l'oeil in Italy. The walls on the hotel where we stayed were made to looks as if they had molding but it was painted. I had to touch it to make sure it wasn't real molding. Once we discovered that we had to look at things from the side to determine if they were 3D or painted. This was especially true of ceilings. Some of the decorated ceilings in the Pitti Palace were undescribable.
More next time...
