After 6 months of excitement, we are finally in Italy and it
is amazing!
I flew from Norway to Pisa on Friday, a day before the rest
of the group. I didn’t have much time in Pisa, but I did manage to see and walk
to the top of the tower in Pisa, which was pretty cool!
Saturday morning I took the train from Pisa to Florence
and met up with the rest of the group. The rest of the group had a rather
dramatic start to their trip. They
missed their flight to Pisa, so they flew into Florence instead. Four students were without their luggage and
one student was in the (Italian) hospital. We met up with our guide for the
trip, Alessio, and his wife Louisa joined us for the first day. For dinner we
went to a local “hole in the wall” restaurant and it was amazing. We had all
sorts of different foods; it was like an Italian thanksgiving. Lots of bread,
pasta, cheese, meats and wine. Low-carb diets obviously do not exist in Italy!
Yesterday, Sunday, we spent the first part of our day with a
local guide touring the city and historical landmarks. We saw the Santa Maria Cathedral which was so
massive that I couldn’t capture the whole thing in one picture. Our guide told
us that they would build such massive and expensive buildings to represent the
power of God and to give the people a surprise effect. You must
walk through narrow coble stone streets to get to the cathedral and all
of a sudden you are standing right in
front of the cathedral and all you can say is ”wow.”
Florence is a city that unlike many other European cities thrived
during the medieval period. It was a
wealthy city and important economically, politically, industrially and an
important trading city in Europe. A very wealthy family, the Medici, who
unofficially had a great deal of the power in Florence, were bankers and they were major contributors to the international
banking system as we know it today. They also made a great contribution to the
field of accounting, the double entry bookkeeping system. Our tour ended in the beautiful Giardini Medici in the
outskirts of the city. It was up on a hill and overlooked the entire city. The
picture below shows the beautiful contrast between the city and the surrounding
green hills. I was told that one square meter of land at the very top costs up to 10,000 euros!
During the afternoon, we went to Galleria Accademia to see
Michelangelo’s statue of the biblical hero, David. Unfortunately we were not
allowed to take pictures, but it was much bigger than I imagined, and not to
mention a little disproportional.
In a few hours Alessio is taking us to see an exhibit and
later tonight Corey and I have our first article presentation.
Ciao!
How was the statue disproportional? Was his head too big?
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