Italy Mike's Trip Report

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I had a very exciting summer this year. I did a lots of things. Two days after school got out I went to Italy. We went all over. The first place we went to was a little town called Castellina in Chianti. It is very small and it is mostly in the mountains. We stayed in a medieval village which has been restored on the outside to look like it did originally about 700 years ago. Inside it was very luxurious. This place was called Colle Lungo. The apartments are located at a wine farm and they have over 200-300 acres with vineyards. They also have trails that go throughout the property so you can walk around the farm. They also had a pool there and pool sided they had all of these plants and fruit bushes and trees. We stayed there for about 3 days.

After Castellina we went to Florence - my favorite part of the trip. The reason why I liked Florence so much was because it was jammed packed with museum’s. We went to the Piazza and currently they have lots of art pieces by a Portuguese sculptor named Botero. We also took a tour of Florence with a private guide names Simone. He knows every single thing there is to know about Florence. He also from time to time gave me quizzes like how many city walls are surrounding Florence. Well now I know it. Currently there are nine. The reason why there are nine walls instead of just one is because when Florence was first created it was a small village and they didn’t know it would turn out to expand a lot. The Florentines needed protection from other villages that would try to attack them so what they did was they started to build large thick cement walls that would protect them from other villages attacking them. Over time Florence has become crowded and they needed to expand the city larger but the walls were in the way. They decided to hollow out the city walls and made houses inside of them. It was really fascinating seeing what the inside of the walls looked like. I enjoyed the tour a lot. Since I like art so much we switched tour guides at about 6:00 P.M and went to a museum. We went trough most of the exhibits and we were walking through the museum from 6:00 to 9:00 P.M I think the painting I liked the most in that museum was the Virgin Mary just because the artist used so much color and details in the picture. I loved going to the museum but then the next day we did the best thing throughout the whole vacation. We went to see the statue David. I think it was the coolest thing for my whole vacation. I also had a tour guide there and she told me lots of history about David. David is the symbol of Florentine people because he defeated the giant Goliath with his courage and wisdom. She told me that a long time ago David was made to be in front of Town Hall. That is the reason why Michaelangelo made it. Then once it was finished they put it in front of town hall. Once there was a riot and somebody threw a bench from the nearby building to the piazza and David’s arm was broken. The Florentines realized the statue was too good to leave it on the piazza. Also, they were afraid lots of pigeons would leave droppings on this wonderful masterpiece so they moved it to a museum. Finally the Statue was transported to the museum and they glued the arm back on with I think cement or some kind of sticky substance and it still stands there today. Our tour guide also told us that they used to just have the statue standing there on the podium but then one day a mentally disturbed person ran into the museum with a hammer and started hitting the foot of David. The toe flew off and still hasn’t been repaired. To make sure this didn’t happen again they made a border around the stand made of plexy glass so you can’t go right up to the statue. The Wall it approximently five feet away from the stand.

Finally after Florence we took a train to Venice. The train station was very unorganized because we were supposed to be on the seventh track but it got switched at the last minute to track 13. Once we got into Venice we went to the sidewalk right next to the street of Venice which is obviously water. A "vaporetti" (which is a large boat) came to pick us up. A vaporetti is also like public transpiration. The most similar thing in New York to this would probably be a Public bus. The ride was very very long but we finally made it to our stop. We didn’t know where to go so we left my dad on a sidewalk watching all of our luggage while me and my mom went to go look for the hotel. We had an awesome hotel which was a four star and it was right 50 feet away from the most exciting part of Venice, Piazza Saint Marco. There they had over 500 pigeons in the middle of the piazza being fed by tourists. What they tourists did was on the street they sold birdseed and people would hand feed the pigeons. At night they always had a band playing so we stayed until 1:00 A.M in the morning to watch the band. One very cool thing in the piazza was they had the first digital clock ever made. It changes every five minutes. Next to this they have a church which is the most fascinating one in all of Italy except for the chapel that Michaelangelo painted. This one had designs on the ceiling but all of them were made of mosaics. It was awesome. My favorite restaurant was probably Harry’s. Harry’s is a world renown restaurant where Hemingway ate.Tthey have the best food in Italy.

Well this was pretty much my summer. I really enjoyed it and I hope my next summer will be as good as this one.

Disclaimer: this report presents just an opinion of individuals who's been there.... Tastes Differ...
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