Been a while since my last post. Not too much has really been happening in the past week. Mostly spending my time in the studio trying to get work done. Starting to get fairly cool here. Getting nice and chilly at night (like around 2 or 3 degrees at night and only around mid/high teens during the day).

On wednesday, we had went to Santissima Annunziata and inside the Florence cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore). The SS Annunziata is a nice little church inside the Piazza Santissima Annunziata. By nice little church, I mean big and stunningly decorated church. Part of it was designed by Brunelleschi, but since It's construction has had Brunelleschi's original architecture altered with gold frillery and (sort of terrible) frescos. We had to sneak inside between sermons and apparently of all the churches they don't like tourists all that much (even students they frown upon). However, for the brief 20min we were able to be inside, it was absolutely stunning. We were not allowed to take pictures in the interior however, it's a common theme in churches in Florence. It's not to protect the art, as the pictures and flash wont damage a lot of it. The main reason is if you take pictures, then you wont buy postcards, so it's a copyright issue.

After that, we stopped at a cafe north of the Florence Cathedral for snacks and hot drinks and then proceeded into the Florence cathedral (which shockingly enough had no line for admission). As cool as the building looks on the outside, the buildings interior is fairly boring and the crypt (the part you don't have to pay to get into) has been converted into a gift shop. They also had a loud recorded voice saying "SHHHHHHH! silenzio per favore! SHHHHH! Silence Please!". It was the most odd experience, as it's so far the only church I've visited where they constantly hiss at you.

Friday, we had a trip to the Mosaic stronghold of Italy, Ravenna. We rented a bus for the 2 1/2 trip to Ravenna (which is on the Adriatic. The view along the way was stunning. We essentially drove to Bologna and then the bus turned to Ravenna, as we had to drive around the mountains. Unlike taking the train to Bologna however, by highway it was mostly outside of tunnels, so we got to see an amazing view of the Tuscan scenery on our way.

Inside Ravenna, we had a whirlwind tour of a variety of churches, baptistries and other sites. Mostly checking out anything to do with Dante Alighieri and the cool mosaic artwork all over the town. We saw the Baptistry of Neon, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Arian Baptistry, Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo and the Basilica of San Vitale,

We also stopped at a food market, which I'll admit I spent too much money at on my lunch and there was also a chocolate festival. They even had chocolates in the shape of metal objects and coloured to look like rusted metal objects. For example, you could get chocolate drill bits, saws, paint brushes, pliers, monkey wrenches and bags of chocolate screws. I got a chocolate clamp and it was delicious.

We left the town (which is a very small rich town) at around 4:30 and got back to Florence about two hours later.

Here are the pictures from Rivenna.




Ciao.