One step back and two steps forward

I'm so physically exhausted from seeing ALL of Florence, that getting the motivation to do this blog post was very difficult and included a glass of local red wine and a cup of 1/2 fruit tea and 1/2 green tea.  Moreover, before we delve into this breath-taking experience of Florence, I'll have to step back to Siena to go over a few milestones and experiences.

This past week has flown by, but I feel like I've been here forever (but seriously, not just in the 7th grade girl way of signing year books "OMG this year has flown by, but I feel like I've known you for-eh-ver. LOLZ").  This week was the first time that I've used a clothes-line.  I did a "load" of laundry and was shocked by the size of the laundry machine.  Imagine a top hat that's been stretched into a larger circle,  or a washing machine that is about as deep as a top hat...and it was a front load. What a challenge.  Two hours later...my laundry was clean and I had to figure out a way to dry it.  We don't have a dryer and I'm assuming it's because it would consume too much energy (we were warned that if we had too many things plugged in the power would just shut off...no big deal.)  Anyways, I hunted around town for clothes pins as our well-stocked apartment didn't have any...I finally found some in the Euro store.  After only dropping one pair of underwear to the ground below, I got all of my laundry up.  A day later, it dried, oddly stiff though.  I think I'll stick to modern technology.

Another first from this week: using a bidet.  For those of you not familiar with this nifty device, it's essentially what you would get if you combined a toilet and a sink.  It's meant to give your butt and junk a mini shower.  Supposedly, it's more hygienic.  So, my interaction with this device began roughly 21 years ago when I was conceived.  By random luck, I was given and X and Y chromosome and was born a man.  As a man, I have less of a need for toilet paper than women.  Also, as a man, when I go abroad my roommate are also men and also have a decreased need for toilet paper.  So, if we are assigned an apartment without toilet paper, we may or may not have avoided buying any to this day.  One day, it turns out that I WAS in need of toilet paper and my genetic code had screwed me over.  There was not toilet paper.  There was a roll of paper towels, but I wasn't about to be the guy who clogged the toilet with paper towels.  I decided to suck it up and use the bidet.  Supposedly, you are supposed to squat above it, well that didn't work.  I slipped and ended up sitting on the rim, wondering what I did to deserve this, as the cold water assaulted me.  Once I finished cleaning, I waddled across the room to dry off.  Then, I had to wash my hands.  This just seems so inconvenient.  But, hey it's an adventure.

Class-wise, we went to tour a coffee factory.  They roast coffee beans, and barley (you can make coffee out of roasted barley...it has less caffeine (what's the point then?) and tastes kind of weird without sugar.)  This factory, was more of a warehouse in the middle of the Tuscan fields, but in a kind of sketchy way, not in the "Under the Tuscan Sun" way. We walk around back and are greeted by a man who looked like the love child (I need a new term, suggestions?) of George Clooney and Mitt Romney.  He didn't speak any English but kept making jokes and looking very proud/sly while flirting with our translator.  We called him Uncle Mario.  We were hoping to pick the most stereotypical Italian male name and I decided I wanted to be related to him, but not his brother or son.  Turns out it was Leonardo, close enough.  Anyways, Uncle Mario explained that his coffee was half robusta and half arabica and gave us all a cup from freshly roasted beans and another cup from freshly roasted barley. 

In the back is a gradient of barely roasted coffee beans to dark roasted coffee and in the front you have barely roasted barley to roasted coffee.

On the way back, we took the public bus, which was crowded.  I ended up standing in the back kind of surfing, a challenge far beyond my skill set.  The bus magically turned around a tight corner at a fast pace and I went tumbling into one of the poles that people hold onto.  Turns out, these poles aren't meant to support the entire weight of an American guy.  It broke.  I broke Italy.  Well, didn't really break so much as temporarily ruined.  It was fixable. 

Back in Siena, we decided to head out to Florence.  We had to try and figure out how to actually buy bus tickets in a foreign language.  Between our collective knowledge of French, Latin, and Spanish we did it BOOM!  An hour later we arrive near the center of Florence.  We spent the next two hours walking through Florence, through the country side of Florence, and up an ungodly amount of hills.  It was a beautiful walk with some amazing views but it was still a two hour walk with like a 40 pound backpack on. 

The river in Florence and a random bust.

That evening, we went to a palace that was plastered in beautiful art.  We went up to the top of the palace and looked out at Florence and saw everything lit up at night.  It was wild to think that centuries ago, people did the exact same thing and saw pretty much the same scene, just minus electric lights and cars and stuff.  It was also really upsetting to find out/realize that SO MUCH art/architecture was lost during WWII.  Apparently, walls were built around the highly valued pieces in Florence and around Europe (In Germany, they hid pieces in underground beer cellars.)  A special force was also created to ensure that certain pieces, like The David, weren't destroyed.  When I finally passed out in my bed, I was in heaven.  Compared to the super hard bed and shower without pressure in our apartment back in Siena, the bed I'm staying in, and the shower I'm using, were Godly.

The Duomo from the clock-tower in Florence.

Today, our feet and legs took even more of a beating and we went to see The Duomo, The Academia (the home of The David), and another art museum.  They're big on art here in Florence.  The Duomo was breath-taking from the outside and amazing on the inside. Unfortunately, we didn't go into the dome, and we only saw a portion of it, but the sheer size of the church and the dome was incredible.  The David literally caused me to just stand still for nearly 20 minutes.  His hands were awkwardly large, he was incredibly ribbed, and unlike the rest of the statues, his eyes were actually filled in.  Also, just the size of The David is crazy.  It's like two stories.  The rest of the art in The Academia and in the other art museum was pretty interesting but after roughly 5 hours of looking paintings, I began to stop appreciating things.  Points I took away:

• The Medici family was insanely wealthy.  The second art museum was in one of their houses and had multiple halls filled with statues and portraits of royals and also had frescos.  
• I dislike medieval art.
• I need to do more research about "the massacre of the innocents" so a lot of art becomes more than just dead baby jokes.
• Saint Michael is pretty cool judging by his depictions

Famous things I saw over the past few days:

• The Duomo
• The Birth of Venus
• The David

• 

  Not the real David, but smaller replica outside the clock-tower.

   
• Probably loads of other things that I didn't realize.

The view from our house.

Sorry for the long post.  There's still a lot left to talk about, but this has dragged on way too long.  Here are some pictures for making it through.  Cheers to the daily adventure.

The view from the street near our house.

Florence, from the way up to our house.

 

The Duomo.

A crappy picture of the visible part of the inside of the dome of the Duomo.

A sunset in Florence.