Family Reunion part II

The Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, the Medici Family, Michaelangelo, the David, the place where every Italian dreams of living, just happens to be the city, for which I took a whole semsester course at university to fulfill a General Education requirement and turned out to be one of my favorite courses at U of I. Florence. Of any other city in Europe, not Paris, not Rome, not London, I wanted to see and smell the real Florence. This was my top destination. And man! did it fail to reach my lofty expectations. Yes, the duomo is nice, yes the Uffizi has some renaissance masterpieces, and yes, you can kind of imagine the Medici family in the Palazzo Vecchio. But overall, you can hardly picture this city as the place where Europe revived itself during the 16th century and became the center of great thinking. I guess it's pretty hard to imagine being in the center of great thinking when you are queuing up for everything with a bunch of tourists. And that's all I need to say about Florence...







Now, Rome is a whole different story. Of course, there were more tourists here than anywhere else that I've ever been. But as someone who is very impressed with ancient monuments and buildings, I couldn't have asked for more from a city. The first day, we headed towards the Vatican City. Though I wasn't very impressed with the St. Peter's Basilica (seemed like any other grandiose church in Europe), the Vatican Museum was a sight to behold. Going through the complex with an audio guide, it seriously took half a day just to see the mains. And the finale of Sistine Chapel was stunning. I had only known about the Adam and God section of the Genesis so seeing the whole thing was a revelation.



And when I was walking through the streets, just wandering on my own, the first day, I cam across the Pantheon, which quickly became my favorite world monument next to the Great Wall of China. Just the fact that I was wandering through the streets and BAM! A 2000 year old, perfectly preserved structure. An interesting fact about the Pantheon - if we build the same structure with our technology using concrete 2000 years ago, it would have crumbled a long time ago (thank you Lonely Planet!)



If I mentioned everything that I had seen in 5 days in Rome, it would take awhile. The one other favorite remain of mine in Rome was the Roman Forum, not really the Colisseum or the Palatine Hill. Maybe because I took 5 years of Latin, but everything I read in Latin came back as I was standing in front of the Temple of Saturn. I knew that taking a dead language for so long would come in handy one of these days!





On Saturday, my parents had to leave Rome to go back to Japan while I had another day to hang around rome. Some of the people in my hostel (yeah I know, back to reality) and I went out hard to several places during the night.

Overall, I was very pleased with Italy, even though Florence was a bit disappointing. It was great to see my parents again, and I can't wait to travel with them again - even if they can sometimes be a pain in the ass.