Florence & Pisa

After my stay in Venice I went to Florence. Florence was very cool, I have definitely saw the best art there so far on my trip. The first day I saw Michelangelo's David, which was incredible. It is a massive statue, it must stand 20 feet high and it is raised about 6 feet off the ground so it really towers over you. Additionally, as a piece of art it is amazing, the detail of it is unbelievable, it is so good you can see veins in his arms but you need to remember that this statue was carved out of a solid piece of marble. Also on my first day I went to the museum in Florence and I saw two painting by Da Vinci and several by Michelangelo and Botticelli. It was a very impressive city for its art.

The next day I went to the Duomo, which is a cathedral with a dome, it was very sparse inside and they had a huge area blocked off which didn't allow you to get a good view of the dome. I didn't have to pay to get in but there were roman ruins, which the church is built on top of, that I paid 3 euros to see, it wasn't worth it because it was badly lit, an over all underwhelming experience. I recently read a book on Machiavelli and I went to the building where he worked for the government. Again it was kinda sparse and not really that interesting. I spent some time walking around the city and it really looks how I imagined Italy to look.

I was on my way to Rome and I decided to stop in Pisa to see the leaning tower. Pisa isn't exactly on the way to Rome but I thought it was a worthy side trip. The leaning tower was very interesting. It was leaning quite a bit and when I saw it I was surprised that it hadn't fallen over. It is very tall but not that wide; the perportionality of those dimensions may have something to do with the lean. But there isn't much else to see in Pisa, at least not that I read, so I saw the tower and went on to Rome.