From Sunny Florence to Rainy Rome

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So we went to Florence last weekend. I jsut havent had the energy to write all about it on here. I know taht the longer i take to update, the more i'm going to have to write about when i do, but that makes me feel even more overwhelmed about writing so i just don't. So i am just going to recap the main events from Florence.
Train ride there. yay pretty tuscany. dropped luggage off at hotel and went to see some churches or something. a museum on architecture. a library. the uffizzi gallery. that i enjoyed. i got to see a lot of paintings that i learned about in art class last semester. Saw Botticelli's Venus, Baptista Sforza and Montefeltro, the Venus of Urbino, the Madonna of the Long Neck, Bacchus, and some famous altarpieces by cimabue and Giotto. I still have fork and a knife at that museum though. we were going through security and emilio told us we better not have any knives or weapons on us, jokingly, but then i pulled out my knife and fork from lunch and he FREAKED out. i dont know why though, they just put htem in a cubby next to some really big knives and stuff and gave me a number. but we came out a different way from coming in, and i didnt have time to go get them. so i ahd to eat my lunch with my fingers for the rest of the weekend. Florence is a pretty cool place. a lot different than rome. maybe better. i'm more intersted in art than architecture anyway, so i probably would have done better in florence, but thre's no florence program. anyway, its a smaller city and less chaotic and i really liked it there. so we went to a bar that night and met some florentines adn some other students from other places. the next day we went to siena which is a small town about an hour from florence. such a cute place. great shopping there, even though i didnt buy anything. the other kids got some good stuff there. we climbed up this tower in one of the churches that goes up to the arch and you can see everything from up there, but the staircase is insane. its about a foot and a half wide and insanely steep. and people are going up and down this thing at the same time, which is almost impossible, its a miracle none of us fell. it was worth it for the view though. So back in florence, we saw the brunelleschi's dome and some other places, but i never saw the David! i was so disappointed. we spent so much time looking at buildings we skipped the actual interesting stuff. so we got on the train home that sunday night. sat in our seats. then a bunch of other people got on and their tickets were booked for our seats too. oh god. our tickets had been reserved for SEPTEMBER 16 instead of OCTOBER 16. so we jsut had to either find seats in the train somewere (very few) or jsut sit on the floor between the cars, which was miserable. luckily the ride was only like an hour and a half or 2 hours. still i was pissed. So the rest of this week was spent studying for midterms in italian and architecture of the city. both went ok. havent done much else. sarah keri and i have been cooking a lot just to have something to do. and we're going to the papal mass this sunday. james melnick got our whole group tickets, and this is apparently a really important mass b/c he's cannonizing like 5 saints and it doesnt happen a lot, esp while we're in town. he's a good guy to know. unfortunately, its super rainy for the next 2 weeks and we're going to have to do mass our in the piazza in the rain for about 5 hours. i think it will be really cool though. that's about it.

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Photos

Ponte Vecchio
Keri's pictures (since my camera is dead) from the Uffizzi Gallery

Lunch
We ate our lunch by the Duomo the first day and entertained ourselves by luring in the pidgeons and then scaring them off.

Creepy
Creepy stuffed pigs eating at the front of a meat store. yikes.

Angry manequinns
Why are they so angry?

Siena square
This piazza is really cool. its shaped like a seashell and they have a horserace around it every year

Our class
Just taking a break

Florence at night
this is from Piazza Michaelangelo. some of the florentines we met told us we had to see the view from the city from there. as you can see it was very pretty.

Listening to Emilio talk about something
more or less anyway

The Fake David
the fake one was as close as i got to seeing it.