…was a bitch.
I’m super sorry, really sorry, about my recent cussing habit. I promise I’ll stop, but it is really difficult for me to convey what happened this weekend at Florence without cussing.
Why? Because I missed the train back home. Again.
Yea.
…
So I get to the hostel after a fitful three-hour train ride. I ended up sitting in somebody else’s seat for the first two hours nodding off and probably drooling until the guy next to me poked me to wake me up to the conductor asking for my ticket who then directed me to my correct seat three compartments down. -__-
Florence itself was beautiful. All that everybody said it would be. The Duomo is breathtaking and walking up the Duomo is also, literally, breathtaking. I climbed 375 stairs – alone – and it was liberating. The stone stairways were endless. They wound round and round through narrow passageways and slanted stairwells and I felt like I couldn’t climb another step. Right about when I thought they should really invest in making signs like the ones on the 5 that say “100 – San Francisco,” except they would say, “50 steps left, you’re almost there!” I turned a corner and saw the light. The sight was beautiful. I didn’t know Florence was completely surrounded by mountains on all sides. Beautiful, green mountains with the clouds lazily dropping in and the intricately ancient town of Florence stretched out in front.
Some of the highlights of my time in Florence:
1. Buying a pair of sky blue leather gloves, like Carrie’s from Sex and The City. =)
2. Standing in front of Michelangelo’s David. He is definitely not the small boy from the Old Testament. He is HUGE. And not with any sexual undertones, but he really is a goliath himself – 17 feet tall. Seeing him in person really underscored why the sculpture was such a big deal and why there are a hundred plus replicas of him everywhere. I sat there staring at David for a very long time. You can see his left hand clutched around a rock, his blood veins showing through his knuckles; his curly hair that invoked in me a strong desire to run my hands through it; his beautiful boyish face staring out knowing that this was the moment where faith was all that he had – faith and the rock in his hand.
Next to David was a hallway filled with paintings from various artists depicting the life of Jesus. Scenes from his crucifixion, his resurrection with angels and flowers falling from the sky, his crowning of the Virgin Mary in heaven. And then there was the one of Jesus after he was taken down from the cross. The dead Jesus was lying on the floor, crumpled, leaning on Mary with his left arm outstretched underneath his head, heavy with death. The artist painted Mary in obvious grief, her face stricken with pain. But her head also was tilted in a disturbing position, completely sideways, parallel to the floor. The painter intended Mary’s body to parallel that of Jesus’ to show how his pain was just as much hers. It made me cry to imagine the horror and pain it must have been for Mary to see her son on the cross dying.
3. Getting lost in the Uffizi Gallery while trying to get the hell out. It was overwhelming. I thought I finally saw everything after triumphantly exiting a hallway when I was only faced with yet another endless corridor filled with room after room of paintings and church dome embellishments and statues and frescoes and it was just TOO MUCH. After awhile all the paintings of Jesus and the Virgin Mary blurred into each other and when we finally found the ambiguous room that carried the Da Vinci’s I was so exhausted that I took a glance and walked out. It took us nearly 20 minutes to find the exit. Shivani got lost completely and somehow ended up in the bathroom.
4. Spending an INSANE amount of money on one dinner: Florentine Steak. For crying out loud I really can’t even write down how much the whole dinner ended up to be. And I definitely won’t be converting it into dollars.
5. Talking with an old Florentine man who went into a passionate fit asking, “Ma perché Milano, perché? Firenze é piú buono di Milano. Why are you studying there? Study here, be here. I’ve been to Milan, and it’s nothing compared to Florence! Florence is beautiful, Florence has everything, there is nothing in Milan!”
6. Seeing the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The second I saw it I started laughing hysterically. It really is so funny. It’s unbelievable that they really made a leaning tower. It’s just so silly. It’s ridiculous to actually see the tower in person, leaning. hahaha geez. Even looking at the pictures crack me up.
From Pisa we had bought a train ticket from Pisa to Milan for only 16 euro. But of course it was too good to be true.
Because, of course, we missed it. And our options were either to stick around till 2 am for the next train going to Milan (which was 7 hours from then), or pay 40 additional euro and get on the one leaving in 3 minutes.
I paid 40 extra euro.
Ran to catch the train from Pisa to Florence. Then waited at the Florence station because our train to Milan was delayed by 70 minutes. Can you believe our rotten luck?
70 minutes.
“Who died?!” I yelled.
“Somebody probably did,” said Christine.
“Oh…shit…”
We finally arrived in Milan at 2 am after waiting in another line for a taxi. Overall I had lost 75 euro to nothing.
It was an exhausting weekend.
