Florence is a winner!!

April 25th--Today we experienced 2 of Italy's biggest highlight's: Michelangelo's David and Fiorentina (Florence) vs Roma in football. We got up this morning and headed over to the Academia to see the David statue. When we got there, the line was a little long, so we headed one block over to the San Marco Museum. This is the former monastery that has the best collection of Fra Angelico paintings. Fra Angelico, both a monk and a painter, did much of his work directly on the walls of the monastery, creating some beautiful frescoes. This is probably a museum that would have not been on our list had it not been free admission during culture week. It was great to wander through the monastery and see the building with the former rooms for the monks filled with artwork that blended the medieval faith with Renaissance realism. From here we headed back to the Academia. The museum is fairly small and primarily serves as the house for David. As you enter, you almost immediately come to a long hall with the statue at the end. We had been told that the work is amazing, and it truly is. Standing at 14 feet tall, it is a massive sculpture with amazing detail. We sat down with the kids and retold the story of David and Goliath so they would understand the background of the statue. Abby remembered the story from her children's bible story book and Austin was just excited that this big guy had a rock in his hand. One of the ways that we have created interest in the sculptures by the kids is to have them think about how impressive it is that they started as a big block of stone. This was made even more "real" in the Academia as there are also the Prisoners by Michelangelo. These 4 unfinished sculpture are each in various forms of completion. They clearly show the original stone and the chisel marks. It really helped all of us visualize how amazing it is to see a finished sculpture; especially one as impressive as David. After a quick visit to a musical instrument exhibit inside the Academia, we exited to find some lunch. Nearby was a little hole in the wall place with cheap pasta that was recommended in the Rick Steves' book. The 2 guys working there were really nice and helpful and made some great recommendations, with one exception. They asked if we wanted to try a true Florence dish. We, of course said yes, only to be brought crackers with chicken liver pate. We both tried it, but only one bite each. It was not very yummy. Luckily, the rest of our lunch was great. While in the restaurant, Austin noticed a poster of the local Florence football team, Fiorentina. One of the guys came over and started explaining who the various players were and talking about the team. He told us there was a big game tonight against Roma (Rome). That was all Austin needed to hear. He started saying he wanted to go to the game tonight. We weren't sure if we could get tickets or not, but headed back to the apartment to find out. After a little research on the internet, navigating through a lot of Italian language sites, I finally figured out the tickets are authorized to be sold at certain tobacco shops around town. One of them was close to our apartment, so I set out on a mission to get tickets. I found the place and also found it interesting that Amy, as do all woman, received a reduced price ticket like the kids. We left the apartment and headed to the train station with the intentions of taking a taxi to the game. However, once at the station we ran into an American college student studying in Florence who showed us the bus we could take to the stadium. Once arriving at the stadium, we were quickly aware that this was going to be like no other game we had been too. We made our way to our seats which were in the corner of the stadium, but high enough up to have a good view of the action. It seems that the "rowdy" sections are behind the goals so we were right near the action. They were singing and clapping like crazy. This is a relatively small stadium with only 45,000 capacity, but it was the loudest crowd we had ever experienced. We also noticed in the far corner from us, was a section with the Roma fans. What made this interesting was the section was surrounded by tall, barbed fence like you would see in a prison. Also, the two sections on either side were empty and the police had created a human wall along each of those sections. We're not sure this is normal (don't remember seeing a section like this at the Madrid stadium) but it definitely highlights the passion of Italian football. The crowd only seemed to get louder as the game went on. I got up early in the game to get drinks for the kids. I found it interesting that when I went under the stadium, I only saw 2 other people. Hardly a single person was out of their seats missing the action. Luckily, we were able to see a Fiorentina victory and one where they scored 4 goals, so lots of excitement. Count us in as fans off Italian football. Amy is already talking about wanting to see another game!