Home of the Renaissance

-
With all of us fully recovered we headed to Florence next. Florence is the absolute mecca for Renaissance art. When I was there eight years ago, we were in such a rush, that we were in the Uffizi gallery for about 45 minutes which is an absolute crime against nature. I was determined to see it properly this time. We ended up getting in without waiting in line and having a personal two hour tour of the most important and influential art of the renaissance. It was great. Botticelli, Lippi, Giotto, DaVinci, Michaelangelo, Rafael, and Caravaggio. Priceless, beautiful works of art that I was overjoyed to finally get to spend some quality time with. Okay, I'll try to stop nerding it up.
The next day we had a walking tour and saw a lot of the city including Pointe Vecchio, a large bridge over the Arno River. It is the only bridge in Florence to survive world war II, and is a very interesting place, with little shops build right off of it. We also visited Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore and Brunelleschi's Duomo. I later climbed the 400+ stairs to the top, getting a great view of the frescoes inside the dome, the architecture of the dome itself and an absolutely incredible view of the whole of Florence. It was truly unbelievable and the best six Euros I spent. I felt no sway, no shudder, no hint of instability as I stood 375 feet in the air on a 37,000 ton dome that was raised in 1436 without the use of wooden scaffolding. Sweet. It was here I learned that when you're alone, the best way to get a picture of yourself is to ask someone who has a more expensive camera than yours to take your picture. 1. they won't steal your camera because they already have a better one. 2. they probably know what they're doing.
We also saw Dante's house, and went inside la Basilica di Santa Croce where we saw great sculpture and the graves of Michaelangelo and Galileo. We also visited the Duomo museum where we saw the original golden "gate of paradise" baptistery doors completed by Ghiberti in 1422 after 21 years of work.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dueling Blogs

-
I have the immense privilege to be sitting right across from Maddog Medic in the flesh. We aren't speaking, though he is listening to me. Want to solve this riddle? He is transcribing an interview he did with me for his blog at this very moment. And I too am blogging at this very moment! How crazy?! I am stationed this week at the EMS today conference to stock up on professional wheelings and dealings and learn some stuff. This is a wonderful conference full of networking and new products and I learned already that one dose of glucagon costs $130. That's out of control! I cannot wait to catch up on disaster literature and EMS tricks of the trade and get as many free pens as I can at the expo tomorrow.  As for now, I'm headed to a class on smart stuff and pediatric breathing problems.  I am surrounded by EMS nerds and I love it! I spent the day learning about things above my pay grade such as how to read a chest x-ray and how to differentiate between subarachnoi...
Click for More

Clothing Removal

-
Image
Last week I had a patient who fell from her horse while jumping at a show. When I got there the BLS crew had immobilized her and, well, that was about it. She was complaining of neck pain and at that moment couldn't remember what had happened. I used my horsey knowledge to build up a healthy rapport with a scared patient. In general, not a lot was wrong with her. My biggest problem was that she was on the backboard and still had on all of her fancy English riding clothes. I made my best efforts to get off her button up shirt with high collar and black outer riding jacket, but it caused her pain, and then I made it worse. Worse than falling off your horse, worse than the public embarrasment of having an ambulance called for you, worse than defenitly losing your show class, was the stupid paramedic who cut off your expensive riding clothes. I, too, had never felt worse for cutting someones clothes off. She cried and shrieked and you would have thought I was punching her in the gut. I...
Click for More

The Race

-
Sometimes this job is like a race. Like you're carrying this person on your back, and it's a messy race. You're tripping and sweating and you almost drop them. It's bouncy and there's trash everywhere. And if you can just get them over that line. To the line and throw them over. Throw them over and into the ER, you're obligation is fulfilled. Your job is done. You've won the race. And for a long time, that was it. Mission accomplished and I wasn't responsible for anything else. I didn't care about anything else. Get them to the hospital.  Dust my hands off and pat myself on the back. But somehow, they crept in. What did happen?  Did they live?  For the first time I asked myself.  I began to bring them home. I put them on a shelf and they stared down at me. They said, did you run fast enough?  Did you fall?  Did you drop me?  You threw me onto this island- over your line, but was it salvation?  I left in a hel...
Click for More