The following morning, we caught an early train heading from Venice to Florence. We got lucky though because we didn't reserve train seats ahead of time for our eurail. When we went to get the tickets the morning of the lady at the desk informed us that they were sold out! I think she saw the panic in our eyes(we had already booked our hostel in Florence and couldn't afford to stay in Venice an extra day) and she gave us another route to catch to get to Florence. We ended up switching regional trains twice but we got there eventually! Crisis adverted. When we arrived in Florence, we checked in to our hostel and immediately headed to the Galleria del' Accademia. For those who don't know, this is one of the most famous art museums in the city and the line outside is typically around 3 hours long. It houses the famous statue David. Being the overly organized(note: only organized when it comes to traveling) girl that I am, I managed to book reservation tickets for this museum a couple of days before by finding the phone number on trip advisor and then miraculously getting someone on the phone to book them. We managed to get inside the museum within 20 minutes! Yea, I felt awesome. When we got inside, we walked around and ran into the statue of David. The security there was pretty tight but I managed to sneak a picture...
It's hard to tell in this picture, but this statue has such a powerful presence! I wish I could just stand alone in the room, look at it, and take it all in.
We then ended up walking over to see the Duomo. It is MASSIVE. It (almost) puts the Cologne cathedral to shame.
Right after walking around this, we realized that the famous baptistry doors were right beside us! Everyone who has taken art history at A&M will know what these are! Caffey loves them & I'm pretty sure they've been covered on two different tests now, hahah. Here they are!
Later that day, we just walked around, explored the town, and popped in different stores. The following morning was Easter! We discovered that the Scoppio del Carro takes place here; this is a 450 year old tradition in Florence! It basically involved the parading of super old flint around town for a couple of hours. Eventually the flints make their way to the Duomo where a cart is waiting for them. The cart is rigged with explosives and the flints then light the cart on fire. If the cart explodes properly, everyone witnessing will be blessed with a good year! It was really cool to take part in such a tradition.
It was packed! A parade followed after this.
Later that afternoon, we hiked up to Michelangelosplatz because it has a gorgeous view overlooking the town. It was stunning!
We ended up walking up to this creepy cathedral that was perched on the very top of the hill. I don't think it was meant to be creepy but I seriously have never felt chills when walking into one before! This one was super old, smelt like it was decaying and had these eery paintings on the wall that were about 1000 years old. It was dark and there were carvings on the walls from the 1800's!
Here it is in all it's creepy glory.
Crazy!
The following morning, we woke up at the crack of dawn to catch a train to Rome for the day! In all the guidebooks, they say Rome can't be done, let alone walked, in a day.
Challenge accepted & defeated.
On the train ride over there, we met a man from Romania who had just moved to Italy. He was a professional fighter. We all started talking and learned that he left his family because he had no possibility of moving up in the world or making a life for himself. Romania still exists as a caste system in a sense. His goals are to stay in Italy for awhile until he earns enough money to move to Amsterdam. Eventually he wants to move to America because the economy is so bad in Europe(Germany is one of the few stable places). It was very eye opening to talk so freely with someone who lives a life so opposite of most people I know.
One quote that stands out to me was when I asked him about Italy:
"Do you like it?"
"I need it."
It really put everything into perspective for me then.
We got to Rome and decided to go to the Colosseum, Forum, Pantheon, Vatican, and the Trevi Fountain in a day. All by walking! Call us crazy, but we did it. My favorite was the Forum. For those who don't know, the Forum is the ancient city of Rome. It is literally in the center of modern day Rome and is surprisingly well preserved for being 2000 years old(think the time of Jesus!). Getting to walk thru this ancient city and see still standing structures, ornamental carvings, a 2000 year old church, and buildings upon buildings upon buildings was SO COOL. It was one of my favorite things I've done in all of Europe. I loved getting to sit there and try to picture in my mind what this once thriving city looked like. Truly amazing.
We kept walking thru the city and eventually made our way to the Vatican! It was cool because the chairs were still in place from when the Pope was elected a week ago. The line to tour St. Peters was extremely long but we kind of slipped in and got to see everything. And by slipped in, I mean Teaghan stood beside old people and snuck in. Gotta do what ya gotta do. After touring the cathedral, we wanted to see if we could get into Vatican City. Unfortunately there were guards everywhere surrounding it, letting only the actual residents in. Teaghan went up to the guard to ask him a question and I'm pretty sure everyone watching thought he was trying to break in, haha.
Anyways, after that it started raining. Whoop, spontaneous european weather. We went and saw the Trevi Fountain and then headed back to the train station. We managed to do everything we wanted and got back to Florence around 10 that night! Ah yea, beat the system.
The following day was spent just wandering around Florence before our train that evening. We had tickets to catch an overnight train which would take us to Munich at 5 in the morning. Once we got to Munich, we caught a train going to the airport and then an airplane going from Munich to Cologne. After that, we caught a bus going from Cologne to Bonn and went straight to class. Why did we put ourselves through that torture? To save money? Never again. We were so out of it at the airport that we were sitting in Starbucks for a couple of hours waiting for the flight until we realized that our flight was set to leave in 30 minutes and we hadn't gone thru security yet. We ended up running full sprint through the airport. Luck was on our side that day because we somehow made the flight! However, when we finally found the gate number that was on our ticket, we sat there until the last minute, confused as to why it said Paris on the board. We thought our flight was late and eventually went and asked the lady working the desk. She was all like "Oh, you should never trust your boarding ticket!" Apparently what's printed on a piece of paper besides your name isn't real y'all. So we frantically ran to the other gate that was giving the call for last board...and barely made our flight. Keep in mind that nothing is in english here so when they make announcements, you have no idea what they're saying!
But yea, made the flight. Made it to class. Italy was awesome.
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