Day 43 - Eh?

Today at breakfast we met some new friends...two guys from Toronto and another guy from Colorado. They're ending their month long journey through Europe with Florence being their second to last stop and heading to Rome on their last leg...so Mary and I got to give them our new found advice for things to see and do and place to hang out (like our favorite hangout spot!) in Rome.


Mary and I headed into town to start our day of sightseeing which first place we found ourselves at was the leather market which is AMAZING! So many leather things, who knew?? But as we were looking at the leather market a huge black rain cloud decided to come hang out too so all the leather people were racing around pulling their tarpes over their leather goods so it wouldn't ruin it, clearly this was an emergency situation!


We met up with our new found Canadian/CO friends and decided to go into the museum inside the San Lorenzo paraish of the once ruling Medici family which was neat to see and perfect timing because that black rain cloud was now angry and making a ton of thundering noices! Inside the museum we saw Michelangelo's Madonna & Child, Night & Day, and Dawn & Dusk. Apparently the Medici family and Michelangel were pretty tight (here's where I'd be crossing my fingers to show how close they were).


Next we literally ran across the street for lunch because by this point it was still pouring rain outside! Lunch was delicious, my first pasta dish which was excellent!

Afterwards the rain stopped and we decided to wait in line to go into the Academia to see the real David statue. Of course we weren't supposed/allowed to take pictures of the David but I did, woopsies!! The David was really cool to see, it's much bigger in person than I expected and it's just crazy to think that once was a block of marble and now is this perfectly proportioned man! Also I learned that his right hand is made much larger to represent the hand of God...cool huh?!

Check it out...there's me with the David!! Can you see me?

That doesn't look suspicious at all!!

There were other neat paintings and statues in there...many of them tell Bible stories which I liked because I do better with pictures and images : )

After spending a couple hours in there we headed out to the Florence Duomo and Baptistry. The facade of the Duomo is amazing and even just looking at the doors there's tons of different faces on there, insect and animals...I wish I knew what they all represented. The Baptistry doors are known to be "masterpieces"...they're gold and massive, so I guess that's why they're considered masterpieces. After some jumping pics and new running pics that we learned from our new friends we headed over to a super yummy gleato place...ohhh it was delicious!!

Outside of the Florence Duomo


This was our best jumping picture...we weren't quite on our jumping A game that day.

Running pic

Best gelato I've had so far!!

Jared is a Gelato Grouch!!

We headed over the Arno river and made our way to the Michelangelo Piazza because we heard there were great views up there and at a church just past it. Our black rain cloud that was there earlier in the day decided to come back and it started pouring on us!! At one point I stopped caring if I was dry or not because I was so soaked it didn't matter...although you'd think that would be uncomfortable it was so beautiful on top overlooking the city that it probably was one of my favorite memories from this trip : )

View from on top of the hill

View from the church...pretty sunset with the rain clouds

Jumping in the rain...thought this pictures turned out cool!

We were able to catch a bus back down into the city (praise Jesus because it was pouring again and we were far from home) and made it back to our hotel to get dry clothes and head to dinner. We said our goodbyes to our new friends who went off to Rome in the morning...so fun meeting new people along the way!