Ciao Italia!

I have officially been in Italy for over two weeks so I figured now was a good time to start documenting things and all that jazz. Better late than never, amiright?

First off, hi hello. In case you're reading this and you don't know who I am, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Madison Love and I'm 19 years old. I'm currently a sophomore student at UCLA, but this fall I'm studying art history and Italian abroad in Florence, Italy. ("Wow you're studying abroad as a sophomore? That's so brave/cool/different/weird/etc." Mhm cool I'm glad you think so. I just figured that, seeing as I have yet to declare a major and am therefore working towards nothing right now, I may as well get my GE and language requirements out of the way and study abroad when I know I have nothing to hold me back. Like, suppose I major in film. I wouldn't be able to study abroad as a junior because all the classes I have to take that year for that major are only available on campus. So like #YOLO.)

I arrived in Italy on Wednesday, August 26th, after what felt like the longest flight in the history of ever. All in all, traveling to Florence from Los Angeles wasn't that difficult. The first flight, from LAX to CDG (Paris), was long and I didn't have that much leg room and my chair barely leaned back, but the plane had a quality selection of films and I ended up watching Big Hero 6, Whiplash, The Theory of Everything, and The Imitation Game, so that was cool. Also the food was surprisingly good. Shoutout to Air France! The flight from Paris to Florence isn't even worth documenting. It was like an hour and nothing happened.

When we got to our hotel (and by 'we' I am referring to myself and my mother, as she and her friend Jason decided to make this little adventure of mine into a weeklong vacation for themselves) we met up with my mom's friend who had arrived a few hours ahead of us and got dinner at a little restaurant down the road. We then promptly hit the sack and slept soundly most of the night (at least I did).

(first dinner in Italy = pizza and gnocchi cause we eat like real Italians.)

The next day we bought the Firenze Card which is a card that basically gives you access to the entire city for 72 hours. With the card we could go into all of the museums and churches and what not and skip the line and the tickets were all included in the price of the card. It was very worth the money imo.

(the view from one of the museums. I think the Uffizi maybe probably)

(Ponte Vecchio)

The first museum we went to was the Uffizi. (I think. I can't really remember what order everything happened in because we did so many things in such a short amount of time.) For those of you who don't know, which is probably everyone cause let's be real not that many people know a lot about art history, the Uffizi houses one of the largest collections of Renaissance art in the world. Seeing as Florence is the birthplace and home of the Italian Renaissance, it's only fitting that they would have museums with all the masterpieces from that time period. The Uffizi has mostly paintings, with a few statues here and there. But like wow that place has HUNDREDS of paintings.

(one of the statues in the Uffizi)

(The DaVinci Room)

(Birth of Venus)

After the Uffizi we went to the Galleria dell'Accademia, which is a small-ish museum that is home to one of the most glorious pieces of art ever made. When you walk out of the hallway of illuminated manuscripts and aged frescoes you don't really expect to see Michelangelo's David standing right there, a few feet away from you. I mean obviously you know he's there, somewhere in the building. But I mean he's just RIGHT THERE. And you're so close and everything is just so surreal. Lemme tell you, David is no joke. It's no wonder he's such a beloved piece of art because he is marvelous (MARBLEOUS if you will! hahahahaha ...okay I'll stop now). Um yeah. Spoiler alert: I've already been back to that museum again to see David. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that a single human person was able to artfully craft a piece of stone into a glorious and realistic looking biblical figure. It's simply incredible. Nice going Michelangelo, proud of u.

At some point throughout the day we ate lunch at a little cafe. It was gr8. Italian food is truly the best food, I don't care what you say. After the Accademia we went back to the hotel to relax. (trust me, 2 museums in one day is actually a lot. Also, walking everywhere is hard. Also jetlag is real.) Later that night we went to dinner at another little restauraunt down another little road and then got some delicious gelato and then went to bed.

Our first full day here was long and tiring, but awesome and great and fun. We saw so many awesome amazing incredible things and such gorgeous art and it was all just amazing.

This is already really long so I'll write about the next day in the next post.

Until next time! CIAO!