Evan & Christina in Europe

Duomo and Lunch

Visited the famed Duomo in Florence, and had lunch at Paoli. Paoli’s a bit touristy, but had good food.

Baptistery of San Giovanni and Museo del Opera

The baptistery had the reputed Doors of Paradise, although there are replicas there now. The Museo del Opera houses the originals, as well as Donatello’s Mary Magdalene.

Santa Croce and Dinner

Went for gelato, but it was closed. We went to the church of Santa Croce, where the tombs of Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and Galileo are housed, as well as a pseudo-tomb of Dante. We also had dinner at Da Ganino.

Duomo and Lunch

We had a bit of a late start this morning despite trying to go to sleep early. I still didn’t have much heart to set out to Florence in the rain. We first set out to visit the Duomo, which is rather gorgeous. Then we walked to get lunch at Ristorante Paoli. Evan got a ravioli and I got spaghetti with clams. We really shouldn’t have gotten dessert (which were a few balls delectable cake batter wrapped in amazing chocolate and a dish of fresh strawberries to go with the melted chocolate) which pushed us over our budget just a bit. It was also our purchase of an extra camera battery (since we had forgotten the charged battery back at the hotel)… although it is also rather useful to have a second battery, since the first one sometimes craps out on us.

Baptistery of San Giovanni and Museo del Opera

We wandered around and went into the Baptistery of San Giovanni. The ceiling was a detailed mosaic of gold and other stones. The doors were replicas of the famed Doors of Paradise. We went to the Museo del Opera afterwards to see them in person. There were various other interesting things- there were pages decorated with tiny mosaic stones. In that same room was Donatello’s Mary Magdalene. It was pretty amazing to see something like that, just sitting there in the middle of the room with a bunch of relics and things. It was also pretty funny when Evan just walked past it without much thought. I wonder if I do that sometimes to great art. One of the three Michelangelo’s Pietas was there- it was funny because we just saw the one at the Vatican, and we’re just missing one in Milan. This is the one that he was carving for his tomb, and was left unfinished. He was about eighty at that time. Evan went up to the bell tower, and took lots of photos, while I hung out at the museum’s bookstore… then I met him there.

Santa Croce and Dinner

Evan wanted to go to the gelateria, so we headed over by Santa Croce. The gelateria was closed, but we went to the Basilica of Santa Croce. This was really cool, and Evan agrees with me… there were the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, with a bunch of other people’s. Dante’s “tomb” wasn’t really a tomb- it was made, but his body was never retrieved for burial. It was a bit sad when we got out- it was a little past 5, and one of the destinations I thought would be cool is the Museum of History of Science (something like that anyways), which has Galileo’s right hand which was stolen when he was being buried and the lens that he used to find four moons of Jupiter. Since the museum closed at 5, we needed to work out what to do, and stopped by Michelangelo’s café (just the name of the café) when it started raining to figure out where to go for dinner. Evan and I decided to get dinner at Da Ganino. On the way, Evan got a bottle of Tuscan wine. At Da Ganino, we got ravioli and a noodle dish with mushrooms. It was quite good, but the noodles were a bit bland. We just went back to the hotel afterwards to prepare for our extraordinarily early day tomorrow- at the Uffizi.

This entry was published Monday, May 28th, 2007 at 11:04 pm and classified in the category/categories. Uncategorized. You can find the comments section from the feed. RSS 2.0. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.