May 17th 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.
