Day 7: The Accademia, Mercato Central, and a beautiful Sunset!

May 17^th Day 7 Florence:

Kristina’s FitBit Information: 8.01 Miles walked & 19,828 steps

Beth shared her breakfast experience: “This morning, before departing for the Galleria dell’ Accademia, a few of us went out to breakfast at a small coffee bar around the corner from the hotel called Moka Arra. We bellied up to the marble counter and ordered cappuccinos and doughnuts, and stood and ate them inside before paying and leaving. I was in love with the attitude toward food and coffee in Italy, with every meal, it was all about taking your time, nothing was “to go,” there were no travel mugs or cups being given out, all beverage and food was consumed before leaving and moving on throughout the day.”

Florinda met us again this morning to give us a tour around the Accademia, the art gallery that houses Michelangelo’s David. The line was long, but Florinda was able to get us into the museum quite fast. She explained how all of the statues Michelangelo worked on were result of him trying to “find the art within the marble,” how the sculpture was already in there, he just had to remove all the extra marble out of the way. She also described to us how his sculpture motion style was similar to a flame, strong on the bottom, yet twisting and spinning perfectly balanced to the very top of the sculpture. After visiting other sculptures and observing Michelangelo’s changing styles throughout the decades, we finally got to see the real sculpture of David! The astonishing sculpture, impressive in size and talent, was begun when Michelangelo was only 26 years old.

Morgan said that she “loved learning about how Michelangelo created his statues! The gallery had a few statues that showed Michelangelo’s progress and they really helped her to get a visual of how the artist’s creative process worked.”

Taylor V. writes “After learning about Michelangelo and buying a biography of his life, I could not wait to see the David in person…I could’ve cried and luckily Donna was right there with me, so I didn't feel totally nuts.”

After the Galleria dell’ Accademia, Florinda took us to il Mercato Central (https://www.mercatocentrale.it/en/photogallery/) a large convention-like space of vendors and different restaurants cooking up and selling some of their best foods and flavors. Each shop had its own specialty from cheese to cold meats to pizzas to vegan to fresh seafood. If you could think of a dish, there was probably a shop that sold it there. Some of the other ladies went out to lunch elsewhere with a plan to shop the afternoon away.

 “What made some of us laugh,” Morgan wrote. “Was this old man who peddled around this little mozzarella cart! He would stop at every table throughout the market to ask if people wanted some fresh cheese.”

Taylor M writes “Tamara, Kelly, Melinda, and I went off and found a delightful little restaurant called MasticaBrodo for dinner.  The owner Tony and the host Salvatore were very sweet and treated us like royalty. They each bought us a round of Limoncello and the food was amazing! We liked it so much we ate there the following night!”

That evening we went to see the sunset look at the Ponte Vecchio. It was such an amazing experience and the way the light hit the water and bridge gave us the ability to take some sunning photos.