Rewinding back to Italy... this is fun for me since I can live once again through my photos and recall the great memories that I made on trips while I was there.
One Monday after class, my friend Anna and I decided to make a trip over to Vinci, Italy which is about a half hour west of Florence. Before leaving for Italy, I had been advised to check the city out by a Florentine native who lives above my sister down in San Francisco. He told me if I went to Vinci, I could see the true flavor of Italy and what Italians in their everyday life live like. I can say that he was right.
Vinci was a very small town that didnt have much besides the two museums devoted to Leonardo Da Vinci and the house which he was born in. Something interesting that I learned while I was there was that his name means "Leonardo of Vinci" because no one knew his real surname. I think that everyone for the most part knows who Leonardo Da Vinci is but doesn't know much about him. Well I can tell you that he was one hell of a smart man!! He invented so many different mechanisms that we still use to this day. He invented the pulley system which was immensely helpful in the construction of the Duomo in Florence. In addition to inventing, painting, sculpting and being pretty much awesome in every other area of life, he was one of the first artisans to study the human body. Most people are familiar with his drawing of the Vitruvian Man with the study of human proportions. At his time, Leonardo wasn't highly appreciated for his study of the human anatomy because it was against the beliefs of the church. In order to conduct his experiments and learn about the human body, he bought corpses from families to dissect. Gross. His study led to the realism and accuracy that can be seen in the statues and paintings of the renaissance period. Okay enough Im done with my history lesson.
Anna brought her friend Stephanie with us and the three of us girls went through each of the museums and enjoyed the exhibits (all of which were in Italian). After seeing all that we could in the museums, we climbed the tower of the second museum which gave a 360 degree panoramic view of the city and the surrounding country side. It was absolutely beautiful. We stood up there talking for about an hour just talking about enjoying the scenery. Afterwards we climbed down and grabbed a light lunch accompanied with a bottle of wine at the museum cafe next door. We sat there for a good two hours talking about life and all the crazy things it encompasses. Theres nothing I love more than a good bottle of wine, friends and life talks.
From there we climbed through the city to see the house where Leonardo was born. The fact that his birth house is still standing in the same place is unreal. He was born on April 15th, 1452. The house in which he was born in is about a half hour walk out of the town and up through some fields on an unpaved road. Once we got there we walked through the house which was a total of two rooms and signed the guest book.
From there we walked back down into the main town and went to catch our bus back to the train station when we realized that we missed all of the buses and had to catch a taxi. We got back to the train station caught our train and made it back to Florence around 9pm, walked to our favorite gelato shop which was closed. Some of the girls that we met up with said that we should just knock on the door anyway which we did and the owner opened the shop just for us! He recognized us since we frequented it so often and was nice enough to satisfy our gelato craving and addiction. It was a perfect day in Italia!
Aw, just recalling all of this makes me miss it that much more! Since I've been home, I've been so busy with wedding planning and working that I havent had much time to reminisce and miss it as much as I thought. But now that I have, I love and miss Italy SO much!
Ciao, Ciao!!
Xoxoxo Ash
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