Firenze e Arezzo.

First of all, I know I've been really bad about blogging the past few weeks. Apparently studying abroad actually means studying abroad sometimes. Weird, right? Anyway, two weekends ago, I went on an excursion with my study abroad program to Florence and Arezzo. We stayed in Florence Friday and Saturday night and stopped in Arezzo for a few hours on our bus ride back to Roma on Sunday. I really, really liked Florence. I didn't know that the entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which means they can't build any new buildings in the city; they just have to renovate old ones. The hotel we stayed in, for example, was relatively modern inside, but it happened to have been the home of Dante's wife. Like, the Dante. That was so freakin' cool.

Needless to say, Florence has a TON of art. Really, really famous important art by really famous important dudes. At the Ufitzi Gallery, built by the Medici family of course, I saw the Birth of Venus and La Primavera. I saw works by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael ... basically all the ninja turtles. I saw Michelangelo's David too, which our tour guide referred to as "her boyfriend". He is so not overrated. There were scary security women who would yell at you if you tried to take a picture and then make you delete it, but rebel that I am, I managed to take one anyway. Of his ass. Well done, Michelangelo.

I think art, stationary, and leather sum up Florence pretty well. Everywhere you look there's another shop selling absolutely gorgeous paper, pens, stationary, cards, whatever. I had a really hard time not buying the entire store. We also went to the leather market, where every vendor for blocks and blocks is competing for you to come into their shop and buy their goods. Again, self control was necessary and very difficult to maintain. The entire street smelled like a new baseball glove. It was wonderful.

The cathedral and il duomo were cool too. I just wouldn't have chosen that color scheme for the exterior. And, as usual, the church just succeeded in making me uncomfortable.

Arezzo was pretty, but honestly that's about it. It's a very small town - at least by my now skewed standards - famous for its gold and silver working. We were there on a Sunday afternoon, so the whole place was pretty dead. We saw churches. And Petrarch's house.