Best of Italy: Florence!

Over my winter break, I traveled with two friends to Milan (1 day), Florence (2 days) and Rome (4 days). Seeing as I took over 500 pictures, 200 of which were probably of the Vatican alone (oops), I'll reserve these posts for my favorite moments. You're welcome. To see all 500 pictures (haha) check out my absurdly large album on facebook. :)

Florence:

At the Piazza della Reppublica, right by our hostel!

Santa Maria del Fiore= Duomo de Firenze! WELCOME TO FLORENCE. :D 4th largest cathedral in Europe! It's an absolute marvel from the outside, but honestly, it's nothing too spectacular inside.

You can hear the bells chiming every hour all over Florence!

In the duomo

Les portes d'or of the baptistery avec les scenes de la bible! Can you guess which ones?

A peek inside the Medici Palace

Piazza del Uffizi!

Model of the David in the Galleria Uffizi

Ponte Vecchio!

View of the Arno River

Apparently if you rub this sanglier with the fountain water, it will bring you good fortune. I sense some very happy times in striped-scarf-man's future!

Street drawings. This was created in less than a day!

Palais de Justice

Santa Maria Novella! Architectural theme in Florence: white and green eternal

After hiking up this mountain like champs, we finally made it to the Parco Michelangelo with a complete view of Florence. Definitely my favorite part!

Firenze, je t'aime.

A peek at the monastery's jardin in the Parco Michelangelo. There is an awesome inscription above the door that reads (translated to English): "Oh beautiful solitude, you are beautiful." Jessie even talked to a monk in Italian!

Cemetery overlooking the city

San Miniato al Monte. This was definitely one of my favorite churches I saw in Italy. And I saw MANY.

Inside

WOW.

One of the coolest cemeteries I've ever seen.

Pizza has never tasted so good. This happened a lot.

Basilique: Santa Croce at one of the most beautiful piazzas!

We may or may not have eaten gelato every day....

Greatest highlight of Florence= visiting with Joel! His apartment literally overlooks the duomo. IS THIS REAL LIFE. Here's to a wonderful night of wine-tasting, duomo-admiring, cookie-sampling, and many many Muhlen-tales. Thanks, Joel! :)

Other happenings: riding the Harry Potter train, meeting some cool Australians in the hostel, seeing a little girl fall off a carousel, and...

ITALIAN MASS. Seeing as the duomo was locked just in time for Mass (?) I ran to another chapel that I had seen earlier. I arrived early during an organ concert, wandered around to the various stations, and sat down to pray.A few minutes later, an Italian woman sat down directly beside me, even though there were about 100 empty seats she could have chosen. Just then, the organist began to play "Ave Maria," and the woman burst into tears! So I prayed for her as well, haha. The song ended, the priest entered, and the folie of 6 worshipers received the first benediction. After a prayer, the priest launched directly into his homily...and that was basically the entire service! (+ the Eucharist.) Every once in a while he would supplement his tirade with a Bible verse. I recognized the words "Jesus" and "veritas," but the rest was just an angry Italian sermon. For this reason, I decided to spend the Mass praying silently, interrupted from time to time with the priest shouting, waving his arms wildly, and pounding the Bible with his fist."VERITAS!" Maybe he was angry that there were only about 6 of us there, or maybe this is just the Italian style of rhetoric? All in all, it was disturbing, uncomfortable, and yet strangely peaceful. I really experienced the power of prayer as well as the fragile role of the priest: strip the service of language itself, and the priest's tone and attitude will speak just as clearly, if not more so. No wonder this fisher of men only found 6 fish... definitely the most bizarre worship experience of my life.