Even
though I didn’t fall asleep until one last night, I woke up at eight, took a
shower, ate breakfast and got ready so Amber and I could go to Florence early.
We wanted to go to the Galleria dell’Accademica to see David, but we also
didn’t want to pay for reservations online, so we decide to just try to beat
the rush and avoid an Uffizi-like disaster.
When we
got to the bus station and bought our tickets, there was a bus to Florence on the
Ordinaria line and we were tired and the next Rapida wouldn’t come for another
half hour so we decided just to take the Ordinaria and see what would happened.
The trip was more of a scenic route and wandered through towns outside
of Siena instead of taking the highway the whole way to Florence. We walked out
of the bus station in Florence just as we saw the Ordinaria pulling in so no
harm done and it was prettier.
We found the Galleria which is located on a nondescript
street and I would have probably walked past it if I wasn’t looking. The
line wasn’t even very long so we ended up waiting for maybe half an hour or so
and going inside. We walked straight to see David, which is huge. I wanted to
take a picture, but a lady quickly snapped, “No photo” at me. I’m ashamed to
say I wanted one so badly I tried to hide behind a pillar and get another one,
but I must have been marked as a suspect because the same lady popped around the corner and shook her head at me. I
cowered in embarrassment and walked away.
Anyway, the museum itself was cool except for the fact
there was random modern art mixed with classics and that kind of threw me for a
loop. My favorite part was the Michelangelo sculptures. They had some
unfinished pieces from him and you could see the rough marble being crafted
into smooth figures. It’s funny because I’ve only been exposed to finished
marble, so I didn’t even really know that the texture is rough and it was awesome
to see crude, vaguely identifiable figures and then see the finished David,
perfect and smooth and so life-like. Art is awesome.
Once we got back to Siena we went shopping for gifts and
such and that was fun but expensive. I’m definitely getting ready to start
saving up my money and having an income instead of withdrawing cash all the
time knowing that it’s currently not being replenished.
When we went down to dinner the Taddei family was
watching Man v. Food and they promptly told us the guy had just eaten a huge
pizza and sandwich. We watched and laughed as we ate pasta and I wondered if
they thought Americans eat entirely too much. Also, there was
a challenge with pancakes and they looked so, so good. Note to self: make
pancakes with chocolate chips, strawberries and whipped cream.
The family then brought out the second course. It looked a
little strange so we asked what it was. They kept calling it trippa and saying
it came from a cow, but that didn’t help a whole lot. When it got onto my plate
it definitely looked strange so we started getting suspicious and I started
kind of freaking out because the meat had a fuzzy, rough type texture and I just
couldn’t eat anymore. I tried two little portions of it and decided that was all
I could do. I felt bad because they were loving it and were shocked that we
didn’t too, but I’m just not used to fuzzy looking meat. Then we ate fruit and
watched Pippo fall asleep in Giuseppe’s arms. Oh, I love that dog.
Once dinner was over I looked up trippa in my
Italian-English dictionary and saw it said tripe. I knew tripe was something
British people ate and something I didn’t want to eat, but other than that, the
word carried no real significance. So we Googled it. Which probably was a bad
idea because tripe is… animal stomach lining! Yeeeeeep.