Happy Holidays (a bit late)

So the rest of Venice was pretty much more of the same: walking around in the rain, getting lost down beautiful narrow streets, exploring different neighborhoods, and of course, eating! The three days we were there happened to be the highest tide of the year, plus it was raining, so we had to wade through about 6 inches of water at the very worst (at noon and midnight) and even the interior of St. Mark's basilica was flooded!

Next we headed to Florence where we celebrated Christmas, saw a lot of churches, ate way too much, and saw way too much renaissance art.  On Christmas day everything was closed except the churches so we saw as many as we could.  Some of the highlights were Santa Croce, which houses the remains of some geniuses including Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and (allegedly) Dante (although apparently he is actually buried in another town); and Santa Maria Novella, which houses some amazing art which I wasn't allowed to take pictures of so you'll have to check out the Wikipedia article.  That evening, we ate at an amazing restaurant for our Christmas dinner. 

Salad of oranges, pecorino cheese, and balsamic vinegar

Pasta with pears and gorgonzola

Osso bucco (Hannah's)

We all got the full three-course meal and ate slowly over about three hours, and were obviously completely stuffed afterwards so we walked around for a while.  The following day, we went to the Pitti Palace, which belonged to someone in the Medici family, and saw thousands of really important renaissance paintings.  Then we went to the Uffizi Gallery and saw thousands more renaissance paintings.  It was kind of a lot to see in one day... Hannah and I started finding doppelgangers in
many of the paintings.  For example, Botticelli's Judith looks like me! and I found one that looks like Jack Black.  Anyway, to wrap up Florence: art and food.

Rome: We got there late in the afternoon, checked into our hotel, got some awesome pizza, and made it up to a park on a hill just as the sun was setting, giving us a gorgeous view of Rome and of course inspiring us to take thousands of photos.

Just as we were walking down the Spanish Steps, some kind of entertainment was starting so we decided to stick around to see what was going on. First some of the cast from the Beauty and the Beast musical did some songs from the musical to advertise it, then 3 tenors came out and sang for about an hour! Perfect timing!  The next day we went to the Coliseum, Palatine Hill, and Forum, which were all very cool.  It happened to be a beautiful, sunny day, perfect for walking around outside (and pictures!)

On our last day, we went to the Vatican City to visit Saint Peter's basilica. We wanted to see the Sistine Chapel as well because, like, how could you not? But, there was a two-hour line around the block, and you had to get a ticket to all the Vatican museums, which would have taken at least 2 hours, so we decided we didn't want to devote the whole of our last day to the Vatican museums.  Don't judge.  Instead, we got some awesome pizza, and went to another museum, the Museo dell'Ara Pacis, which houses the ara pacis, some structure that was left behind from ancient Roman times and they built a museum around it to preserve it.  But the real reason we went there was because they had a Marc Chagall exhibit, which sounded way cooler to us than the Vatican museums.  Don't get me wrong, I love renaissance art as much as the next person, maybe even more, but after spending the last three days looking at it, it was really refreshing to see some more modern stuff, in a modern building of white walls and glass.

so fresh!

So that concludes this virtual voyage to Italy, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!



NOTE: it took me a while to get to this post because my internet is TOTALLY BROKEN.  I apologize for any frustrations this might be causing, like why I'm not putting pictures on Facebook, IT'S NOT MY FAULT!  Anyway, I'm trying to see the positive in it and use this as an opportunity to try to get over my internet addiction and use my time more productively.  Not working too well; I still think about it most of the time and go to my friends' houses to use their internet, but I did actually start reading one of my new French books, so maybe not having internet is helping... a little...