Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Walking, walking, walking
On Monday we walked ALL OVER Florence, Italy on this super cool walking tour. We saw the Ponte Veccio, which was crazy beautiful, and learned some history. On the Ponte Veccio there are a bunch of shops. People used to take out loans from wealthy men to have these shops. If they couldn't pay back their loan, the men would go and destroy their table and take the wares as compensation for the lost money. The Ponte Veccio is the only bridge in Florence that wasn't destroyed by the Nazis. We also walked up this very menacing hill to see one of Galileo's properties. It is sometimes referred to as "the house of Galileo", but wasn't actually his home. It was a property he purchased for his son. Even so, Galileo did spend time there, so it is still awesome (and really old).
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I quite enjoyed walking around Florence. It was a lot of fun exploring the city and there was always something interesting around the corner.
ReplyDeleteI liked how, for Galileo to move to that house in Florence the Inquisition that to inspect the health of Galileo cause they wouldn't believe him or his family.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting that the bridge eventually had actual shop buildings added to the bridge structure itself making several permanent structures which are still operating today.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to hear about how people were able to sell things on the bridge. It was basically like a gang. They had to report their earnings to someone and if they weren't meeting the quota, and fell behind on payments, were forced out on their shops and left with nothing.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to hear about how people were able to sell things on the bridge. It was basically like a gang. They had to report their earnings to someone and if they weren't meeting the quota, and fell behind on payments, were forced out on their shops and left with nothing.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was very neat that the term "bankrupt" originated from the Italian words they used when destroying the vendor's tables who couldn't repay them the loans. Brutal, but quite interesting.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was pretty neat that the Ponte Veccio was the only bridge that wasn't destroyed during WWII by the nazis because even they thought it was cool.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was pretty neat that the Ponte Veccio was the only bridge that wasn't destroyed during WWII by the nazis because even they thought it was cool.
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