Day 17- Florence- The Duomo

Today was our first real day in Florence. We woke up early but it was hard to sleep in my room because my room was so small and has no a/c. Got to love that italian style of living. But we wake up in the morning and have a nice simple breakfast and got started with our walking tour of the city. The streets and city is not too hard to navigate but just sharing roads with bikes and cars is not always fun. There has been multiple times where I would almost get hit by a car/bus/scooter/bike. The group continues to walk to the Duomo which is an amazing church with a large dome on top. The view would be amazing from the top of the dome but it is 435 steps to the top.... I think we are going to try and do that on another day because it would be quite the workout. We met up with our tour guide and walked all around the city. She showed us all the major places in Florence. It was nice to hear about all the old history behind the city and so far it was my favorite city we have been too. We ended the tour at this amazing leather factory where we were able to see how the leather is made into the different things. After we strolled around the shop me,ashley, michael, jenny, alyx,erica and a few other and went around town and were going to do a little bit of shopping because we were going to pisa the next day and were saving the extra time to see the David as well as the Uffizi museum. Ashley of course wanted to see some art so we just happen to walk by the Uffizi after getting lunch because we wanted to make reservations for the museum after our trip to pisa. We walked into the museum and tried to my a reservation for the museum and they said that the state museums were going on strike the next day and were not taking reservations for tomorrow. We ended up scrambling for a time for today and still have time to see the David as well. Oh the ticket for the museum was also 14 Euros! It was ridiculous. The art inside the museum was amazing and had a great deal of religious history in it as well. After leaving the museum we had to run over to the second museum to see the David because it closes at 5 and it was almost 3pm when we left the Uffizi. All of us got in line and the line did not seem to move at all. It took us over an hour to get into the museum to see the David. Finally have 10 more Euros and 1.5 hour long wait we saw the David. It was like nothing we have ever seen. The detail was incredible. I was so happy that we were able to see all the museums but we were definitely beat after that. Also we were very lucky that Laura Brodner was studying abroad in Florence and we met up with her for dinner with her roommates. We went to an appetito and that is were you buy a drink and all the food is free. The place we went to had a very nice selection and changed the food out every 15 mins. After dinner Ashley and I went back to our hotel and met up with Laura and her friends again at her place because we were going to a bar where all of them like to go too. It was a lot of fun to just talk to another group of people. After an hour or so Josh and Chase(two guys from the trip) met up with us and we went to another bar and while I was sitting there I saw the VT logo carved into the table! It was so cool. I wish I had my camera. Then we all just walked back to the hotel and went to bed because pisa was the next day and we had an early get up.