orvieto a tutti: flourence

even though we missed the early bus to the train station we still managed to make it with plenty of time to spare. one of our professors got on the train to rome ( the opposite direction from flourence ) and to make matters worse the ticket was to flourence and if you are caught without a ticket you are kicked off the train at the next stop and have to pay a pretty large fine. lucky she wasn't checked for her ticket and once she got to rome she got on an express train and almost beat us to flourence. once we got to flourence the train was extremely full of commuters. we all regrouped at the station and set off to meet marco at the cathedral of santa maria del fiore ( this is the main church of flourence and is famous for the dome designed and built by filippo brunelleschi. after a quick introduction of the cathedral and of the baptistery of st. john ( directly in front of the church ) we left for the basilica of santa croce. in the square in front of santa croce they were having a chocolate festival. most of the girls seemed to disappear at this point. inside santa croce many of the most important florentines and italians are buried. among the funeral monuments we saw were michelangelo and galileo. once we left the church i found a cannoli in the chocolate festival which was amazing. the tour then released and a few of us left to climb to the top of brunelleschi's dome. this was a major highlight of my trip so far. the climb involved 456 or so steps and offered and amazing view of the entire city and beyond. the experience of moving from the narrow passages inside the double shell of the dome to emerging on top of the highest point of flourence was amazing. we stayed up here for about half an hour before going down and getting food at a restaurant next to the cathedral call astor. one of nicks friends from high school ( leo ) moved to flourence 6 months ago and works at astor so we met up with him and he showed us around. after this we found our first hostel owned by a cute old couple and was surprisingly cheep and comfortable. after we dropped off our stuff and left to see palazzo vecchio and the ponte vecchio. outside of the palazzo vecchio we saw a replica of michelangelo's david ( which was much larger than i was expecting ). the real one is inside of a museum in flourence that i plan to visit on our next trip next weekend. the ponte vecchio ( the oldest bridge in flourence ) crosses over the arno and is lined with jewelry dealers. after we were done seeing everything we wanted we met back up with leo and he took us to a local club called twice. we left at around 3 but leo told us the next day that he left at around 7. the next morning we spent more time walking around and got a train back to orvieto.

tomorrow morning with leave for pompeii. it is supposed to rain but i hope it holds out. some of us are planning to climb mount vesuvius but more on that soon.

caio