Florence, Day 1

Thursday, 5 July 2012

One thing I’m really going to miss about Europe is all the trains. I’ve really grown to like train travel during our time here. It’s so easy. All the major cities are connected by train, so all you have to do is get on a train and you’re there in a few hours. For our travels through Italy, we decided to take the train, as it is easier, cheaper, and faster (in the long run) than flying. So Thursday morning, we go up and boarded to the bus to take us into Venice proper so we could get to the train station. Trains make me sleepy, so we got on the train, and I promptly fell asleep. By the time I woke up, we were almost to Florence.

Florence is easily my favorite city on this entire trip. If I could speak Italian, I would pick up and move there tomorrow. The city is absolutely gorgeous and chock full of history and art. A lot of the buildings were designed and decorated by such greats as Michelangelo. I really enjoyed just walking through the city, taking in everything.

The first thing we did when we got to Florence was board another train and leave Florence. Our hotel was actually in Signa (pronounced “sin-ya”), which is a smaller town outside of Florence. However, the distance between the city center and the hotel wasn’t that big of a hassle. The hotel provided a shuttle from the train station to the hotel and vice versa, and the train to and from Florence was only twenty minutes, so commuting really wasn’t that hard. Plus, the ride was entertaining because we got to see a lot of the beautiful Italian countryside.

Medici Chapel

Once we actually got into Florence for the day, the first thing we did was head over the Santa Maria Novella Church to join a free walking tour I had found online. The tour was geared toward the role of the Medici family in Florence, so we got to see buildings with a lot of history behind them. The Medici family was one of the most important families in Florence’s history. Not only were they bankers and merchants, but they also had a great deal of political power. For a long time, the men of the Medici family were the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the region of Italy where Florence is. Their influence in Florence shaped Florentine history, so getting to learning about them was particularly interesting. The other tour that the company offered was a Renaissance walk, but unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time or stamina to go on that one, which is sad because a lot of the Renaissance was centered in Florence.

Leonardo Leather

After the walking tour, we decided to walk around the city for a bit and just see what we could see. This was mainly because we were looking for a specific leather shop. I went to Florence two years ago on a school trip, and we went to this awesome little leather shop that I really liked, so I really wanted to go back to. The only problem was that I couldn’t remember the name of the shop. I only had a vague notion of where it might. The problem with that is that Florence is known for its leather, so there are leather shops everywhere. I thought that it was down a side street from the Duomo, a huge church in Florence, but after wandering around for a while, we decided that it probably wasn’t there. We asked around to see if people knew the place I was talking about, and we got sent over by another church where there is a leather working school. But that still wasn’t it. We got pulled into a different leather shop because we looked lost and the owner started asking us questions. I told him that we were looking for a specific shop that I’d got to before. He mentioned a shop that EF tours (the group I had gone with previously) had a contract with and pointed off in a different direction. After we didn’t find anything we liked in his shop, we decided to just give up on finding the place and eat dinner.

We headed down a road and just happened to stumble upon Leonardo Leather Works, the shop we had been looking for all day. I was ecstatic that fortune had smiled upon us and we were able to find the shop. Unfortunately, they were closed for the day when we got there, so I circled the location on my map so we could find it the next day.

The "Big Lump"

Our search led us all over the city before we finally found Leonardo Leather, so we got to see a lot of Florence in one day. My favorite place that we came across was the Piazza Della Signoria. The square is full of statues, including a replica of the David in the place where the original stood until it was moved to its current place in the Galleria dell’Accademia. Unfortunately, they were setting up for something while we were there, so there was equipment blocking several statues.  One of my favorite statues there is affectionately known as "the white man" or "the big lump." It is an interesting (and very large), white marble statue of a man. I'm assuming it's after a battle, but I'm not sure.

View from Ponte Vecchio

Another thing that I particularly enjoyed about Florence was the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bride). The bridge’s name is quite accurate, as it has stood there since 1345. It has gone through a lot of transformations in that time. It used to house butchers, grocers, and other merchants. However, the Medici family, whose private corridor connecting their palace on one side of the river to their offices on the other side ran over the shops on the bridge, decided that these trades smelled band and were in general, unappealing. To fix their problem, they removed the butchers, grocers, etc. from the bridge and replaced them with goldsmiths and jewelers, the two trades that sill have shops on the bridge today. Not only does the bridge have an interesting history, but it also affords a gorgeous view of the Arno River, which runs through the city.