Day 14

Hello!

Today was a pretty short day. I got up once this morning to use the bathroom and I felt totally better, then I went back to bed, slept a few more hours, and felt awful again. I've been getting better throughout the day, though my nose is running pretty consistently. It's to the point where the bottom of my nose is sore from wiping it so much.

Anyway. Italy.

We met at 10 this morning at the Bargello (bargello means prison; what is now the national museum of sculpture was once a medieval prison). We looked at Michelangelo's marble Bacchus first. It's a large sculpture depicting the god of wine with an Etruscan cup in one hand and an animal pellet in the other. He is clearly drunk, which is why the cardinal who commissioned it didn't accept it. After discussing Bacchus for a while, we saw quite a few more pieces by Michelangelo and a lot of other impressive artists. My favorite piece in the room was a bronze interpretation of the god Mercury by Giambologna (http://c300221.r21.cf1.rackcdn.com/mercury-giambologna-1343760101_org.jpg). It's Mercury flying on the wind, depicted as the face blowing out air that the whole sculpture balances on. It was pretty stunning.

Next we moved on through a few rooms and saw three important sculptures of David side by side. There were two by Donatello and one by Verocchio. The first Donatello was done in 1408 in marble. It pretty much set the standard for the two pieces that followed it. It shows the boy fully clothed, looking very young in a self-satisfied pose with the giant's head at his feet. The next Donatello David, done sometime probably in the 1430s, shows the pre-pubescent boy looking even younger; this time he is almost completely nude. He wears nothing but a shepherd's floppy hat and antique shoes with Goliath's head at his feet. He holds the giant's huge sword and looks off into the distance. The third David, done by Verocchio in 1468, is the smallest of the three. He's clothed for the most part and wields a sword that seems proportional to his small body. Goliath's head on this one is movable, so no one really knows where it belongs.

At this point we were pretty much done with the Bargello. So we split for lunch and Geoff led Katia, Rosie, Chelsea, and I to a panino place he discovered the other day and didn't stop talking about. So we went to this place, called Osteria All' antico Vinaio, and waited in line at one of their two locations (right across from one another) for about 20 minutes and eventually got our food. It was so good. So worth the wait. The bread was fresh and crunchy on top but soft on the inside. I got eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, and mozzarella on mine. Ugh. I miss it already. During our wait we met a few other American girls, one of which had been traveling alone for a few months and had been here for two weeks. She was cool, she found us again when we were almost done with our lunch to tell us about a really good gelato place down the street. We ended up going there too, Gelateria dei Neri, and it was also delicious. I got cookies and cream and straciatella in a cone. Mmm.

We met up again in front of the Bargello in hopes of getting into a normally closed off room. It didn't work. So we left there and headed for Orsanmichele. Orsanmichele acts as both a sacred and a secular space, evident in the fact that it is almost directly in between the Cathedral of Florence and the Palazzo Vecchio. The exterior is decorated with niches filled with sculptures of saints. We stood out there looking at a few of these for a while before we couldn't bear the cold any longer (it's been in the 50s and low 60s all day), so we went inside and just sat on church benches and stared at the frescoed ceilings and the altarpiece with a Madonna Enthroned in it. We eventually got up to go upstairs to see the original sculptures from the exterior on display. The staircase to get up there was hilariously miserable. It was 4 steps up, sharp left turn, 2 steps up, sharp left turn, 4 steps up, sharp left turn, etc. I can't tell you how many times we repeated that pattern. It felt like it was never going to end. In fact, I even said at one point, "Hell is climbing this staircase for eternity." But we finally made it to the top where a few happy old people greeted us and handed us free bookmarks, so that was awesome. We sat in chairs for a while, talking about individual sculptures.

Since we were all feeling sick and groggy and cold, Dr. Zaho let us go then. A few of us went up even more stairs (these were more bearable) to get to the top of the building to see the view. It was beautiful! So we snapped a few shots then Katia and I went downstairs, ran into Dr. Zaho, and went with her to the pharmacy to get medicine for Katia. I guess I gave my illness to her, woops. Sorry Katia! After that the two of us walked home, I took a nice hot shower, and now we're sitting on the terrace enjoying the weather. We're going to make tortellini for dinner again and just relax.

Ciao!