TRA[life]VELS

I left off en route to Florence. The forecast was snow...and lots of it. In order to get from Venice to Florence, we had to take the main route through the Appenine Mountains. We started off on the main highway, but soon realized that due to the snow, the highway would be closing. We stopped at a shopping center off the highway to get some food and figure out our next move. The plan was to take a back route. It was our only option, even though it was a windy mountain road. AmBex travels in two vans which are difficult to navigate through the snow, and the lack of chains made the next leg of our trip near impossible. We would drive for a ways, and then realize we should have turned down another road which meant we had to turn around. One person would get out and direct traffic on the one way road while the vans attempted to do a 23-point-turn. Regardless of all of that, seven hours later we were in Florence. We ate dinner at the hostel and went quickly off to bed. Our hostel was a converted private estate in the Tuscan countryside just outside the main city. The next day we had the chance to get out and go exploring. Horner took us to see some of the most important pieces of artwork in art history. Florence was at the very center of Renaissance art and culture. The first museum we visited was the Acadamea which is the museum that holds Michelangelo's 'David' among many other things. The next museum was the Oficia ("The Offices") which was one of the Medici's palaces that got turned into a museum. This is the one that holds 'La Primavera" and 'Birth of Venus' by Boticelli as well as numerous DaVinci, Cranach, etc. Boticelli's paintings were the most memorable to me. The next morning it was already time to leave Florence, but before we left we stopped at the Duomo [the Dome of the Florence Cathedral that Bruneleschi designed) and climbed our way to the top via very long, narrow staircase... 463 steps to be exact! It was well worth it because we got to look down on the entire city of Florence. Some of us even launched paper airplanes off the top. The inside of the dome was painted by Zuccari and depicts some pretty graphic images from Dante's "Inferno." When we were on the inside rim we were able to see just how big the figures were. This is a rough guess but I'd say I was only about a tenth of their size. We then went back down the same way we went up and headed for some pizza. An hour later we were off to Pisa! Who knew that Pisa was the Wichita of Italy? I certainly didn't. The only thing that keeps them afloat is the leaning tower. And I am proud to say that I got my very own "holding up the tower" picture. That's at least 10 tourist brownie points. I also didn't know that Pisa was so close to the coast... so we drove there to enjoy the beach and eat some dinner. It was dark by the time we left for our last hostel stop in Cinqua Terra. None of us knew anything about where we were going, and we didn't get there until close to midnight. We all trudged p this hill with our luggage dragging and went strait to bed. We were in for a surprise the next morning.