Henry: Florence Pt. 1

We got into Florence around noon on Saturday. Walked straight to the river past the American Consulate.

Pretty cloudy day, just like most days here in the supposedly sunny Mediterranean.

Alex, Myself, and Max in front of the Ponte Vecchio

The Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge), built in 1345, is now filled with gold and jewelry shops. In order to maintain its prestige, Cosimo Medici banned meat markets from the bridge in 1593.

Sausage pizza from Gusta Pizza. Very good sausage, pizza was alright.

Original location of the David statue is just left of the door. A replica is there now.

Fake David.

Duomo. Massive.

Baptistry

Replica of famed door to the Baptistry

Inside of the Duomo. It's probably about twice as big as this picture would leave you to believe

This was taken after I had walked up nearly 300 stairs. The walk up was a little grueling. In doing so, I realized I am not afraid of heights. Rather, I am afraid of falling and the weightless feeling you get when falling. Very afraid. I had issues walking around the inside of the bass of the dome. All of the stairs were in very small caverns. A girl I went with is claustrophobic, so no matter where we were in our journey to the top of Florence, there was someone freaking out.

This view was incredible. I wish it would have been sunny, but it was still breathtaking. We were up here for maybe 30 minutes. We couldn't bring ourselves to leave until we got a call from the girl we were staying with telling us to meet her.

Max, Tally, Alex, Me

If you look very closely, you can see individual chairs in those large dark rectangles. This is the area where I was freaking out. I had Alex take this picture. I was staring at the wall.

Tools used to build the dome. The dome was built later than the base. No one could figure out how to build a dome that big for a long time. I learned the story in my Roman Architecture class this morning. I'd recommend wikipediaing it.