Florence

So, it is finally time to post about the area I have been living in for the past five weeks. Hopefully this post successfully becomes how I have imagined it. Understand I am not developing this post on the basis to capture the popular attractions of Florence, rather the parts most important to me. 


Enjoy!

Some favorites buildings and sculptures I would see every day:

My street which leads to the water. Right next to it was the Uffizi Museum where the Birth of Venus by Botticello is at.

My favorite sculpture in Plaza della Signoria. It depicts Perseus holding up Medusa's head. Her headless body lays besides his feet.

I love how the blood and gore is depicted in thick squiggles, as if her whole body contained snakes (not just her hair).

View from directly beneath the sculpture

I HATE THIS SCULPTURE! Its a replica of the real David by Michelangelo and it is INCREDIBLY OFF PROPORTIONS! Even though it copies the real sculpture quite well, it is nothing compared to the original. I only posted this up because I could not take any pictures of the real one, which I didn't mind since I spent four hours sketching him.

 Plaza della Signoria before all the tourists arrive 

There are many different ways to walk to the Duomo from my apartment. Theres this one, which is filled with shops and usually crowded with people. This is in the morning when the supply trucks come and unload. Definitely have to be careful from getting hit while walking down this street in the morning.

The Duomo! Amazingly detailed. 

The entrance to the outdoor vendors, the main objects being sold were leather goods, jewelry, scarves, trashy touristy items, and weird items (such as Bob Marley shirts and pipes).

Studio Arts Center International (SACI):

My fantastic photography teacher Romeo flying around on the wall. A past student drew these mini cartoon figurines all over the photography room with Romeo's head glued on top. Theres one of him smoking weed and another of him being all the Winnie the Pooh characters.  

Glance from where I usually sit in the photography room 

My favorite enlarger right by the air conditioning

I BOW DOWN TO THIS PROCESSING MACHINE! I will miss it dearly.

Giant light table. Romeo is in the lime green shirt helping out one of my fellow students.

Carly waiting for her plates to dry from the Varnish

Keeping clean  

Developing room which is located in the first floor of SACI. At first, I hated going into these "closets" with the heavy drapes, because being in the pitch black and loading my film into the container was nerve wrecking. One time I was in there for 30 minutes. I got used to it luckily. 

The front desk. The night receptionist is in this photo, but during the day a dude was there who helped me with all my random problems.

My three (plus Madi's) favorite gelato places:

Those people look happy. Anyways, it was not exactly the gelato I went for, but the price and location (one minute walk from SACI). I could get a 1 Euro cone with two flavors. Usually I tried to mix it up and get random ones (such as risotto and pear, nutella and chocolate, and coconut).  Right across from it was a torture chamber museum, which is why I would walk straight back to school after getting my delicious yummy (gore tends to gross me out). 

Pretty lights. Probably the prettiest gelato parlor I visited in Florence, but the most unhappiest employees (maybe the lights get blinding after a while). They had a huge range of flavors, which made it difficult to choose. The best combo I had there was banana and chocolate. 

And my favorite place, Grom! Its actually a chain and there are some in NYC. The gelato had a different texture than others, a tad more liquidity. I loved watching the employees make perfect little bloops of gelato and plop them on top of each other. Hopefully I can find a good online photo depicting this. I fell in love with it's apricot and dark chocolate. So good!

Thanks to whatever blog I stole this from. Anyways do you see the perfect scoops of heaven? The system was interesting  as well, the gelato were hidden in slots and covered with lids.  

It would not be proper to talk about my favorite gelato places without some gelato photos! This was at Madi's favorite gelato place across the river. 

Someones happy

Sarah modeling her gelato

The happy ending to my five weeks in Florence:

July 24th is a national Holiday in Italy. Before the fireworks, an organization were handing out these beautiful lanterns. 

Random folks preparing a flying lantern. They had to wait until the wax was hot enough to let it go over the bridge.

Almost ready!

Jordan letting her baby go! Not all the lanterns were successful, floating sadly to the river below. 

Some organization folks have a serious talk

Before the fireworks. I was playing around with my shutter speed trying to capture the realistic color of the night. 

Julia. We sat on the strip across one of the rivers. 

Playing around. I love this photo because of the color and relaxing focus. 

Fireworks! 

They were not spectacular, but it was a lovely way to end my stay in Florence.

And that concludes my five week stay in Florence. 

Although I did not get to talk about every aspect I enjoyed, savored, and disliked about Florence, I hope you enjoyed reading my blog for the past four weeks. 

I am in Paris for a week, so except a couple more posts about my continued Europe travels. 

As for the future of my blog, I am still unsure yet.

Short and sweet tastes of this week

There is a construction worker without a shirt right outside my window. I noticed this after I ran outside screaming at my suite-mate Fiona to check out my underwear. Oh well. 

I am still working on the Florence post because I want it absolutely gorgeous and to complete the imaginary post I have in my head. Therefore, I decided a nice sweet post about some highlights of my last week here in Florence would be sufficient. 

Since discovering the market, I have been tempted to buy an octopus. Two days ago, after seeing the David for the first time I decided life was too short and heck I am going to buy an octopus. 

And I did.

His name is Pedro.

I have been wanting to take photos of my flatmate Carly for a while, so I asked if she would not mind respectively playing with an octopus for a roll of film. Not only was she over excited about being asked, but octopus is her favorite animals. She was so incredible with the octopus, I shot two rolls of film (34 photos each!) and ran to SACI to develop them. 

Lets say they turned out awesome and I cannot wait to develop more of them.

Carly and I had a whole plan for cooking the octopus, but because I leave tomorrow I am giving the octopus as a farewell gift to Carly sine she is staying in Florence for the entire summer.

On another fact of my life:

I accidentally had two cappuccinos yesterday morning. I thought that fact was important to share. 

On another note:

It turns out, from our patio we can talk to the SACI apartment upstairs and the one which shares the patio with us at the same time. Sweet.

On another cool note about my life:

Carly and I had a random idea during printmaking to make breakfast for dinner. Both strong lovers of bananas and chocolate, we decided to make banana and chocolate chip pancakes, bacon, and eggs. Our fellow folkie Nika jumped in to help as well. 

Poetic theme song to set the kitchen setting

Carly whipping up the pancake batter

Prosciutto. Extra delicious when fried, unfortunately.

Executive Chef Carly

Our lovely dinner! Nika digging in those eggs (with mild cheddar).

Banana and chocolate chip pancakes! All pancakes were gone by morning, luckily Carly is making more as I type this and hopefully she will bring them to printmaking class. 

Except the Florence post to occur sometime soon!

Venice Weekend Trip

This past weekend I went to Venice with some lovely Skidmore folks. The trip was organized by a visiting professor at Skidmore who is here with her family under the SACI alumni program. 

My first thought of Venice was: "Venice makes the maze of the third challenge in the Triwizard Tournament of the fourth Harry Potter book look easy". Basically, Venice is a gigantic maze with crazy tight streets leading to tiny alleys or huge plazas and bridges pop out of no where to aid individuals across the endless amount of water which mysteriously surrounds Venice. Although I was excited to see the water, I was completely taken back by the craziness of the streets.

My fellow and trustworthy companions Sara and Madi, as well as myself, spent our weekend wondering around either lost or just in awe of the overflowing amount of touristy items being sold, particularly glass and masks. The food was not fantastic, because Venice is more expensive than Florence. But of course I couldn't help myself to taking some food shots. 

On my camera, I spent the trip using manual settings on my digital, something I have never done before. Because I have a better understanding of how the camera works, I wanted to practice on my digital. 

Enjoy!

There is many abandon furniture on the streets. I bet I could furniture a whole single apartment with all the lonely furniture I have seen.

So many mask shops! The cheaply made ones were usually found in the tourist vendors on the streets and tourist targeted shops, while the most beautiful ones were in independent artistic mask stores. Almost every store had rules against taking photos, which was such a shame since they were quite stunning. 

More masks. Sara was on a gigantic adventure to find the perfect mask specifically with purple and gold. It took the entire weekend trying to find her one and all three of us probably tried on 50 masks since we couldn't contain ourselves.

Touristy bead necklaces sold in almost every store. I was tempted to buy one, but I was blessed with quite a tiny wrist.

Pretty shot glass. Probably should have gotten one.

There is something wrong with this picture. Try to find it.

St. Marco's square 

The Cathedral. We did not get to see it unfortunately.

Gondolas. As cool as it was to finally see the tall men in striped shirts rowing standing up, we did not get to ride one because they cost 150 Euros. Och.

On the dock. I like the reflection of the water on the boat tip.

Gigantic yachts lined up on coastline. It was nice and relaxing to walk along this boardwalk like area. There were fewer people too.

Taking a break

Snails! Make me think of my brother Adam who ate them in Vietnam. Yum.

Fruit and veggie market on a boat... poetic

There is artwork all over Venice at the moment. A huge contemporary art exhibitexbhit with countries from all around the world was happening and is the main attraction of Venice currently. This piece is called: "...What if Roots Could Grow In the Waters of the Arsenale?..." by Dalya Yaari Luttwak.

Courageous laundry folks

Now for a snack... 

Sara, Madi, and I had the hardest time trying to find a place for lunch. Not only were the restaurants too expensive, all of us were slowly becoming more and more hot and tired. We finally found an affordable, compared to the other restaurants that is, pizzeria. All three of us desperately needed to just sit and drink water for a bit, so we were not very hungry.

Madi's pesto pasta. One of the better photos I took on manual settings.

My enormous pizza! I am used to smaller portion size pizza in Florence and was quite taken back when this big boy was placed in front of me. I ended up eating half at the restaurant and two more slices while walking on the streets. Madi ending up abandoning the pizza box on a street corner since I was too scared to give it too a gypsy.

It was so hot even the mushrooms on my pizza were sweating!

Because we decided not to attend the contemporary art show our fellow Skidmore folks were going to, the three of us went on an expedition to find the Academia. We spent an hour being frantically lost and exhausted from continuously asking shop employees for directions. When we finally found it, all of us were in a pretty bad mood. Madi, the biggest hug giver, refused to give Sara a hug. It was that dramatic.

I went on my own and spent the most relaxing hour and half sketching. The paintings were absolutely stunning and after attending Professor Waterson's art history trips, I was able to depict most of the paintings. 

My best guess is this painting depicts taking Christ off the cross. This painting is huge and action is highly dramatic.

Probably my favorite painting of my entire trip here in Florence. This scene depicts Mary finding out about her son's death. Its Mary's face which absolutely astonishes me. The emotion expressed is deeply sad, shocked, and overwhelmed so much Mary looks pretty much done with life. Yea, I like it a lot.

No this was not at the Academia. I loved the humor this modern day artist bought, especially this one because it is one of my favorite sculptures which I see every day when heading home (which is down below).

 And for another snackie...

And the rest of the day and the next...

A nice refreshing beer to end the long exhausting day of walking.

Madeline's room! Fit all ten of us. 

Delicious looking sandwiches at a bakery we passed while heading to the train station. I ended up getting a nice ol' big one because it was only three euros and looked too yummy to pass up.

Sara's sandwich. We sat on the dock in front of the train station munching on our snackies.

On the train. The different compartments reminded me of Harry Potter's hogwarts express. 

That concludes my trip to Venice. My next post will be focusing on Florence since this is my last week here. Ciao for now!