Beautiful Florence!

I love Florence. Its just beautiful and full of art, history, life and every corner has some discovery in it. Today we went to the Uffizi museum. I was thrilled! I saw some of my favorite paintings and talked Jacquie's ear off about different techniques of the times and cliches found in their art. There was paint and sculpture mixed and it was in this beautiful palace...oh! Speaking of palaces! Its been so long I forgot to tell you about the other palace we went to and its extensive gardens and sculptures and costume museum! Another time. Anyway...Uffizi was quite the experience. And from the top it had an amazing view of the great Duomo (whose top wasn't put on till much later due to not having the technology to build a dome that big!) Then we had lunch at the cutest yellow and red cafe outside and ate really good food but I don't remember what. I just remember tomatoes and balsamic and so far every meal with those two have been delicious! We moved onto the Science museum where Galelio's stuff (including his finger) had been moved to an alternative sight during restoration. We were bumbed but went and saw a bunch of cool gadgets from centuries past. Out side we wandered around and happened upon Dante's house (that was cool and unexpected!) We stopped for gelatto everywhere but after a while got smart and started researching our gelatto places and asking around. That's when we really found the pleasure of true tuscan gellato! Walking around we saw a sign for a play. It was in this huge piazzaand they had been setting up for a few days (we'd walked by a few times) and this time I asked Jacquie what the play was about (her italian is so good, I don't know what I'm going to do without her!) It was Dante's Divine Commedy put to music and dance. Now this is one of Jacquies favorite author/books. You should have seen her when we happened upon his house (no surprise to her, just to me.) So even though we were exausted we couldn't pass up the chance to see the piece he created in the place he created it in. I got a literary lesson over dinner and we were off to see Dante's greatest work. Dinner! We past this mexican restorant and I had a hankering for a margarita. (I know, no surprise!) The guy yelled happy hour and we went in. I ordered some chips and salsa to go with and the salsa was oddly italian more than it was mexican. It was so yummy! Then we went to this cafeteria style place and I ordered way to much food from this kind boy who was teasing me about my choices and indecisions and so on. He wrinkled his nose at my defacing his cooking with balsamic vinigar and olive oil. It was fun but totally weird too. Wish I'd had someone to share a traditional florentine steak with! It was too much and I couldn't have put a dent in it. (Inch and a half thick as round as a dinner plate!) After we were done we walked back to the piazza, poured some wine and sat down to watch.

I can't even begin to describe what this was like. There was a huge church at one end. Projected onto it was the backgrounds for the different scenes (the woods he is lost in, the sea he has to cross, the flames of hell, satan himself, the clouds in heaven, etc. There were basically two movable platforms on stage that made up the set. The main characters sang while a dance troup did ballet and acted out the characters in the different levels of the inferno, pergitory and heaven. The voices were bigger than life! I still get chills thinking about it! I called dad and let him listen in to a trio by Dante, Beatrice and Virgil. He was on Doner's Beach in Clam Gultch and he loved it! Technology amazes me! Jacquie and I were both falling asleep but it was too awesome to leave early so we stayed to the end where they let these huge balloons go and watched them disappear into the sky. It was phenominal! Walking home at 12:30 we realized that we had been sleeping through Florences night life. The streets were bright, outfits where wild, and drinks were flowing. We made it up to the statue of David and again there were tons of people cars and music. The city lights The club outside our campsite had a line a mile long waiting to get in. Arriving at our campsite, we could have been anywhere and it wouldn't have mattered. We were OUT!