Ponte Vecchio

The Ponte Vecchio, in English means "Old Bridge". It is the oldest bridge in Florence, crossing the Arno river. It is a beautiful covered bridge that sticks out among the crowd of other bridges along the Arno. It has a lot history in Florence, as it was originally built from wood and then later rebuilt from stone in 1345. The view from the center of the bridge, I thought was incredible. You can see way down the coast of the Arno on either side, and if you look to either end you see the busy streets of Florence, and off in the distance you can see the beautiful Tuscan hills.
One thing to notice on the Ponte Vecchio is the abundance of fine jewelers. You will only find gold and silver shops along the bridge now because the Medici family sought to connect the Palazzo Vecchio with the Palazzo Pitti. In 1565 Cosimo de'Medici commissioned Giorgio Vasari to build the Vasari Corridor on top of the bridge. To enforce the prestige of the bridge Cosimo prohibited butchers from selling there in 1593. The gold merchants immediately took up the space and have monopolized it to this day.

The David

During our last week in Florence we visited the Academia, home of the David. This magnificent sculpture was constructed by Michelangelo from 1501 to 1504. When we entered the room in which it is displayed it appeared as this enormous man with bright light just bouncing off of him. It is most certainly the center of attention in the building.

I took particular interest to the sculpture because having taken an art history class I spent a lot of time studying Michelangelo, his artistic style, and the David. I couldn't believe how intricate the details were on his body, or how positively gigantic the structure was. I knew it was large, but I was completely in awe of its size. I could not stop staring at it, trying in my head to imagine how he carved this masterpiece out of a single piece of marble. It is truly a totally different experience seeing a picture versus standing under this towering giant chiseled man who is so famous throughout history. I also find it particularly interesting that the David served as a sex symbol during the Renaissance.

The rest of the art in the Academia was beautiful as well, and seeing it all gave me even more of an appreciation for artwork, especially from the Renaissance era.

Amsteredam and the Anne Frank House

On our free weekend, Ana, A.J., Ross and myself went to Amsterdam. Getting there was quite the journey, from Pisa to Milan, to almost missing our flight only to find out it had been delayed, and then finally making it to Amsterdam. Once we got there and Ana and I got to our hotel, we went to meet the boys who had, true to form, ditched us. We then walked around and explored the city for a little while before finding ourselves at an Irish Pub in the Red Light District. Being that we had only been in the city for about an hour, this was quite a shocking sight to see.

The next day we went all around the city, trying to take in all that it had to offer. One thing i had never realized about Amsterdam was just how beautiful it was. The canals running through all the streets, and the bridges over top of the old boats, it was incredible. I would have been perfectly content just taking a whole day to just look at the scenery, but given that all I had was one day, we wanted to make the best of it.

One thing we made sure that we did was visit the Anne Frank house. This was an incredible experience for me because I have been learned about her multiple times, and my grandparents were survivors of the Holocaust who were hiding in an attic in Poland, similar to Anne Frank. For this reason I was moved by the experience. We walked into the museum and made our way toward the doorway covered by the bookshelf, which was the entrance to their hiding spot. I have never seen stairs quite as steep as those. We then walked through all the bedrooms and the kitchen and saw where Anne slept and ate as well as her family. It was unbelievable to see the conditions that they lived in for so long. I was very happy that I got to see that, in case I never make it back to Amsterdam, seeing that is an experience I will always have.

The rest of our trip in Amsterdam consisted of exploring the streets and the food, where Ana and fell in love with chocolate covered waffles. It was a sad sad day when we had to leave those behind...

Pisa... it leans

On our second Friday in Italy, we took a class trip to Pisa. Our first stop there was the synagogue. One thing that stuck out about this synagogue was the overall sense of comfort I felt sitting in there. It was small, and felt as though if you prayed there, you would be close with the other members of the Jewish community that prayed there with you.

We then passed by the Leaning Tower, which does in fact lean quite a bit, to make our way to the Jewish cemetery. The cemetery is located outside the city walls because during the time which it was constructed, Jews were not allowed to be buried within the city. The cemetery was very interesting because of how far back the stones dated. It was very apparent that this was a place full of Jewish history. The tombstones themselves were very beautiful and ornate. There was one that had a piano and music notes carved into it, which I believe was the tune of the Hatikvah, although I would not bet money on that being correct. The occupant of the grave however was a musician. I thought that was very cool, most tombstones are boring and don't give any visual representation of what the person was like. Our tour guide at the cemetery also told us an interesting story about one of the older tombstones that had fallen. Apparently, some rabbis came to see the cemetery and thought that it was inappropriate for the tombstone to be the way that it was, and then a few days later it fell. We also did grave rubbings in the cemetery, which was a very different experience, but I am glad that we got to do it.

After leaving the cemetery, we proceeded back to the leaning tower to take the typical "hold the tower up" tourist picture, and then made our way to Amsterdam.