A short visit to Florence

The Dome Church, Florence, Italy

On my way back to Delft from Bertinoro, I took a short detour via Florence. The trip lasted 3 days, and it was a vacation to remember, for pleasant reasons obviously. What grabs your view at first is that the entire city is filled with historic details - canals, bridges and the seemingly endless stretch of museums. While I cannot claim to have seen the entire city, I would suggest spending 2-3 days walking around the city, and visiting the important landmarks. A travel guide would provide all the information concerning touristic attractions. So, without further trial on your patience, I would list the following two places that I liked the most:

1. Santa Croce Church

Listed as one of the topmost attractions in the city, this church houses monuments erected for stalwarts such as Michelangelo, Galileo and Enrico Fermi. As always, the paintings inside the church were a delight to behold.


2. The famous Dome church

Shown above, the Dome church looks amazingly beautiful amidst the city landscape. Unfortunately, as I was fairly exhausted from walking around, I did not explore the interiors of the church as much as I did the other places.


It was summertime when I visited the city, which meant that the evenings lasted longer than usual. I used the occasion to capture the sunset in canals, which you see below:

At Bertinoro, Italy

This dates back to the summer of 2009, when I was in the first year of my PhD.
I had attended a summer school held at Bertinoro, Italy (a week devoted to series of interesting lectures and workshops). What you see in the picture above is the lecture room decorated with frescos - that are at least a few centuries old. I was thoroughly impressed with the level of maintenance; the colors looked fresh as ever.

The venue was located atop a hill, which provided a delightful view of the landscape.

Bertinoro was known for its hospitality, and the stone column shown below stands testimony to this. It is located close to the chain of cafes in the town, and the history says that it was erected by nobles back in the 14th century. The rings on the column belong to different households. A traveller would simply fasten his horse on one of those, and be offered hospitality by the family that owned it. Impressive, I felt.

Hello World

This is my first ever attempt at blogging. I will be sharing my experiences as regards travel, hobbies and interests in general. Keep you all posted :).