Completely irrelevent post

Alternative post title: I watch Akihabara@deep too much Part 2

Just a quick aside, but I totally found the park where The @deep crew shot a lot of their scenes, including this one in the first episode. I was always like, what a cute little playground, I wish I could find it someday...and then on the Akiba tour we just totally walked past it!!!



(watch at 0:13)

Also, the o-den they eat in the scene right after (1:25), I totally tried some of that too. It's a hot veggie/fake meat stew that you can buy out of the vending machine. It tasted like salt and fake food, but it was like a wonderful feast for my dorky brain.

MEGA EPIC CHURCH WALKING TOUR

I'm even more proud of us, we went to MULTIPLE locations yesterday! WHAT WHOA SHIT. We decided to go see a billion churches, so we made a google map and plot a route. A ROUTE TO ADVENTURE.


First we went to Santissima Annunziata which is around the corner from our house. It had a beautiful portico with frescos by Pontormo, Rossolino and some others.




It's older than the Baroque but it was remodeled so a lot of it is high Baroque now.


It had a lot of really nice chapels in it, like this one that was all frescoed:


This one too, by Allessandro Alessio


This baroque chapel was definitely the best and most amazing.



Then we went down to the Cenacolo di S'Apollonia which really only had this famous last supper by Andrea del Castagno and a few other paintings that belonged to the monastery before they turned it into a one room museum. This room used to be the refectory.


Then we went to the Cenacolo di Fuligno, which is basically the same deal except it was a lot bigger and had some other better paintings. Their big refectory last supper is by Perugino but the ad a lot of lesser known artists' panel painting and quite a few Lorenzo di Credi's, who was a pretty great Leonardo follower. These rooms also used to be the Egyptian artifacts museum in Florence which is real random.


Next we went to Sant Maria Novella which is famous for a lot of things and you have to pay to get into. It was 7 euro for the both of us which is super lame. Anyway, here you can see Leon Battista Alberti's super duper famous facade, with those distinctive scrolls on the side.


La capella maggiore inside was breathtakingly beautiful It's frescoed by Ghirlandaio and at the time Michelangelo was apprenticing under him, so he ma have even worked on small details as well, but maybe not because he was only thirteen. Anyway Ghirlandaio is amazing and the chapel is gorgeous and so big and completely covered in this:


Masaccio's trinity is also here, which is really why they get to charge entrance fees. Ricardo really likes it, I don't think it's anything spectacular. But it's cool for being the first perfect one-point perspective of the Renaissance and Ricardo likes it for the skeleton at the bottom whose tombstone reads " remember you will one day be like me"


The stripedy nave.


Alberti's famous piazza design, with those crazy fat obelisks.


on the way to Santa Croce we tried to go to il Cencolo di Ognissanti and Santa Trinita but they're both really small and close at like, noon or one, so we were too late. This is Santa Trinita piazza which has a nice triumphal column and cool buildings.


This is Santa Trinita



The Salvatore Ferragamo museum/store.


We found a sore of plant market just past there! the plants were so beautiful and so so so cheap, I couldn't resist and I bought a beautiful little flower plant for 80 cents! we'll give away when we leave, but it's nice to have something to brighten up our apartment.


We passed by the market with this famous pig statue. You rib its nose and put a coin in its mouth which has to drop into the drawin below to ensure your return to Florence.


We finished up with Santa Croce, which is famous for how many famous people are buried there, but it was 5 euro to get in and we weren't sure if our class goes for free and we were tired so we resolved to check our syllabus and maybe come back on our own. But it has a nice facade!


anyway, today we're staying in all day and just going out for apertivo (buy a drink and get all you can eat from the buffet at a bar) because Ricardo's always dying to go to apertivo, bu tomorrow we're going to Pisa so we'll be back soon!

Marco Polo

I'm so proud of us! We actually got up and did something during our spring break yesterday! We went to the San Marco museum, which is really an old monastery where Fra Angelico and some other pretty awesome monks, some who could paint some who were just really famous, like Savonarola. Anyway mostly what there is to see is the Fra Angelico's and here they are for your viewing pleasure:






This piece makes me swoon, and I did. You can ask Ricardo.


We went to sooo many churches today! post coming soon.

Siena and San Gimingnano

A few weekends ago we went to Siena with the Early Renaissance class and IT WAS SO MUCH PRETTIER THAN FLORENCE. It was really exciting and lovely and I wish I could be studying abroad there!

The first thing we went to was a small brick church that was St.Catherine's church and our TA, whose doctoral thesis was on St.Catherine talked to us about the chapel where her head is kept in a reliquary. In there:



Yeah. The fact that her skin hasn't come off (with o without outside help, no one knows) is considered a sign of her divinity. ANYWAY, a good view of Siena from there.



Crazy winding streets messing with your perspective! Maybe this has something to do with why the perpective of Sienese Gothic painting is so off looking for a while?



some sights along our route to the next thing on the agenda...



which was the MOST AWESOME PIAZZA EVER. This is Siena's central piazza with their palazzo vecchio right there in the center. Their piazza however is scallop shaped and huge and awesomely on an incline with a drain at the center which reminded me of Lord of the Rings, where the orcs have to blow up Helm's Deep. TERRIBLE.


a cool fountain with drinkable water at the top of the piazza.





The front of the cathedral's Baptistery. And the interior:






OK GUYS. SADDLE UP. BECAUSE this is ohsocool. This random wall with random holes in it is where they were going to expand the church by putting in a new nave, but then something was structurally wrong with one of the side walls, so they just stopped. AND UM. yeah., here it is. Great planning guys.


That was right outside their Duomo museum, which had some pretty cool things in it, Namely werewolves...


and old guys...


and Duccio's Maesta. NO BIG.


and you can climb up to the top! actually right before we climbed up to the top Ricardo and a friend Dave actually got lost for a while and ended up here by themselves, only to go up again right afterwards!





THE STRIPEDY CATHEDRAL. My favs.












We got a cool lecture from a friend of Helen's here about one of the fresco's in this room being falsley attributed to Simone Martini for ever, and he's fighting against that. It's too complicated to go into, it was a pretty long lecture but it was really good.

That top fresco is the one he was talking about.


Good Governemt and Bad Government and the effects of Good and Bad Government by the Lorenzeti Brothers! WHHOAOAOAOAOAOA. A lot brighter in person than I thought. SO HUNGRY at this point in the day.




YESSS. Picnic lunch! we were so happy some other people decided not to eat in a restaurant because we always bring lunch on these trips to avoid buying food in super touristy areas but we always end up eating by our selves. sad face. But not this time!


Dave and Nikki decided to try smoking for the first time? here? now? really? what? HILARIOUS.


hmmm. Somehow my pictures end after lunch. OH YEAH BECAUSE I WAS RETARDED. and didn't charge the extra battery to my camera so when I put it in because the other one was dead. it was dead too. Dave's pictures will soon be mine and we will post.