Florence.

Florence, or Firenze for those in the know, is very photogenic and I am tempted to skip the airing of my Florentine ignorance and just post some pictures. But I’m not happy if I’m not embarrassing myself, so here goes.

Ask me a month ago, and the only thing I could have told you about Florence is that Lucy wanted to go there in While You were Sleeping.

And I knew it was in Italy.

Reading up a little on the train, I learned that Michelangelo’s David was there, and upon arriving I realized that, overall, Florence is a pretty arty place. The home of
Renaissance art, you might say. And even today, if you can see past all the tourists and the pay toilets, the theme of the city is beauty. Beautiful buildings, music, statues. For centuries, marble figures have been standing on pedestals, posing for students and their sketchbooks. Street musicians are out every night, playing in the piazzas. Sidewalk artists recreate famous paintings with chalk and concrete day after day.

It’s touristy, yes. But I almost feel like that’s fitting. The appreciation of the people around me affected my appreciation, and the impact of this city has reached far beyond her walls. This is where important things started – where men learned how to achieve perspective paintings and how to capture emotion in stone.

And I think that the amount of work and effort and imagination required to try and replicate this world in oils or marble is a testament to the power and imagination of the One who created everything in the first place.

The Piazza della Signoria was my favorite place in Florence. The statues have been there for hundreds of years, turning the square into a famous open-air gallery. This is the original site of Michelangelo's David, but he was moved into a nearby gallery and replaced with a copy in the eighteen hundreds (don't quote me on that date).

Getting our art on.

In the middle is Megan, a friend of a friend who graciously opened her flat up to us for three days AND showed us around town! She's great. You should be friends with her.

Our sweet digs, Florence edition.

An open-air puppet show!

Degrading famous works of art!

Street musicians!

Teaching the next generation the ropes. Very sweet scene.

I took this picture to prove that I was really there, but, on reflection, it looks a little superimposed.