This last weekend was one of the craziest weekends I have had here in Italy. On most weekends, we have scheduled activities planned out by our professors. We were scheduled to travel to Florence by bus to spend the weekend in the beautiful city. Our plan was to go to a museum to visit artwork by Michelangelo, go explore on our own then go to a local opera. It sounded like it was going to be a really fun trip! We took the 8:00 bus that morning and sat on the 2 hour long bus ride to arrive at the Train station in Florence. It was windy and cold but we were all excited. We met up with the Humanities 201 professor, Professor Giorgi to have her show us all the famous artwork. She is from Florence, so she knew all the amazing places to show us, and where all the good places to eat was. We first went to a large museum that was full of bronze and marble statues made by Michelangelo and other famous artists. We got to see Michelangelo's first piece of artwork made when he was a young boy. I am not sure what the name of the peice was, but it was depicting Cupid. Back in Michelangelo's day, if you found Truscan antiques or exevated something, you could make a ton of money. Michelangelo was needing some money, so he made a marble statue of Cupid, buried it in the dirt and then pretended that he found it the next day. He sold it to a buyer and got a "billion" dollars for it. That buyer then had an art show where he was showing off all of the artwork that he had found. Someone noticed that the Cupid that Michelangelo made was not an antique and the buyer was embarrassed and wanted to kill Michelangelo. He found Michelangelo and Michelangelo begged him to let him see his other work before he killed him. Michelangelo made him another piece of marble art, and the artist was more impressed and then started to show Michelangelo off instead of killing him. I have learned that Michelangelo was an amazing sculpture, but he knew it and was kind of a snot. He knew that he was better than anyone else, and he would break the rules and he would do things differently just because he knew he could.
After the artwork, we were given a break, so me and some girls went to go get some Kebab's for lunch and then we walked around the markets, went to H&M and Zara's. When it started to get dark and cold, we crossed Old Bridge and met in a little church chapel to see a local Opera. It was the Marriage of Figaro. It was so good! They explained the scenes to us in English, so it made sense, and it was cool to see an actual Italian Opera. After the Opera was over, it was dark, colder and 11:30 at night. We had to run to the bus station to get our bus before the station closed down. We ran there and found our bus right before it left. The bus was long, and was supposed to take us to our hostel to spend the night. When the bus got to our stop, we got off and realized there was nothing there. There was no hostel and the gate that we were in front of was locked and it was dark. By now it was past midnight and we were freezing in our thin jackets, and just wanted to get warm and sleep. The gates were opened by someone at the front desk and brought us in. Instead of getting to a warm hostel....we had ended up in a Camping Spot. Our professor didn't do enough research I guess, and we had ended up in a camping ground and we were not prepared! We were given one blanket and were taken to a tent. We were all so cold and just slept in what we were wearing that day. It was pretty miserable, but a good memory.
The next morning we went to Stake Conference and then were given the day to spend in Florence or to go home. We stayed in Florence until 3 and then I traveled home to get warm and to eat dinner. It was a funny weekend.
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