On to Florence!

Disclaimer: An outpouring of videos and photos is about to take place. Open this post at your own risk. 

Next stop in Italy…Florence! It’s a lot different than Venice, but still fun! We lugged our luggage 30 minutes (according to some, 5 hours according to me) to our hotel the first night, not quite the most exciting part of the trip, but I was proud of myself for surviving J The first touristy thing we did in Florence was to see the David. I thought it was a life sized statue…oh no, it’s 17 ft tall. I’ve always thought statues were cool, but this one was just wow. I’ve never seen so much detail in a statue before. I could see the tendons behind his knees, the muscles in his arms and even veins running through his hands. K, I know I’m weird, but I loved cadaver lab when I was in the anatomy class at BYU, so this was kind of fun for me!

From the David, we proceeded to the Duomo, the church with a big dome on it. We were walking down the street and all of the sudden it popped out. For something so huge, you’d think we’d spot it from farther away. 

Boom. Duomo.

So we can’t just see a pretty landmark on this trip, we have to climb it! The bell tower is the tall thing on the right of Duomo and it's 414 steps to the top...between 4 and 5 times number of stairs as those leading up to campus from the RB. The next two pictures are from the top....not really....they're from the first top of the tower... We got to the first landing and we all thought that was the top. After 10 minutes of picture taking we discovered another staircase....then another.....then another.... you get the picture. It ended up that there are 4 landings in the tower before you actually get to the top. Woops!

The top?

Window into Florence

 Wahoo! The top has been found! Thank goodness we found the stairs...I had been wondering why in the world I payed 6 euros to climb up 100 ft...this was much better :)

This is apparently my I-made-it-to-the-top-of-a-hecka-lot-of-stairs pose. The awesome Duomo is in the back.

Look at those red roofs!

My head fit perfectly into this turn in the wire, I was amused :)

 Haley let me use her camera this trip (love you Buka), thus, PANORAMA SHOTS! I got way excited.

The view from the actual top of the Duomo

 After hiking, we got gelato, fed pigeons and started exploring. Nin, I found another Disney shop!

 Mask. Classic Italy. That feather? All my mask. It was way fun to try on.

 Before going to the Uffizi Museum, we wandered around the Ponte Vecchio, this really cool bridge with shops lining it.

 Don't get me wrong, the Uffizi Museum was really cool. There were a lot of famous works of art that I recognized there...but there was also a lot of statues and paintings that I didn't know. My feet hurt so bad by this point that I couldn't muster up too much enthusiasm in the latter part of the exhibit.

See? It seriously just pops out of the alleyways!

 First time having caprese in Italy this trip! I have a slight caprese obsession, so this made me very happy!

My second day in Florence was a bit different. I went to see an archaeological museum in the morning with two girls from my group...but we couldn't meet back up with the larger group. So when those two had to catch a train for Rome, I was kinda alone in Florence. Wahoo! It was only for about an hour and I sat in my hotel the whole time. Cell phones really are nice...love em while you have em! Instead, I just had to leave a note on someones luggage telling them where I was in the hotel and asking them not to leave me in Florence!

The train ride to Siena was pretty funny. I sat by a really sweet guy who I talked about swimming and disco dancing with for a while. His English was much better than my Italian, but that's not saying much. Let's just say that I will face anyone in charades when I get home...prepare to be defeated. One row up on the train, Amanda and Moriah were talking to an Italian man via Italian and English phrase book. Whoever he was, he really liked Moriah. Becca and I were rather amused. 

Siena is ahead! I'll post again soon. Love you!