Day 17 - Fireball

Started the day right with a church, Santa Maria Novella.






Then to the Duomo.

Then we headed to the Duomo Museo, or OPA, to see the original sculptures, paintings, etc.



Original panel for the Baptistry doors by Ghiberti.
Another pieta by Michelangelo. He hated it so much that he started hitting it with a hammer. His assistants stopped him and saved this work.
Where Christ's leg was before Michelangelo hit it off

Donatello's Mary Magdelene. She creeps me out.
Thinking intelligent thoughts.

You can't really tell from the picture, but his is made from extremely microscopic tesserae, little glass blocks that are what mosaics are made from.
Death mask of Brunelleschi. He lived to be an old man.
Then we went to another church, San Lorenzo.





Machiavelli
Galileo
Michelangelo






Trying to cover it up...

Weird creepy sculpture exhibition.




Then we went to Ponte Vecchio and Mark took a group picture of us. It was fun :) Afterwards, Elisabeth and I went to a place called Leonardo's. It is kind of like a cafeteria, but with really good and cheap Italian food. I love it. We wandered around a bit after that, soaking up our last bit of Florence, then headed back to the hotel. Just in time too because a huge thunderstorm started shortly thereafter. Elisabeth, Claire, Mckell and I were just chatting in my room when we looked outside and saw a huge flash of lightning/fireball accompanied by a huge crash of thunder! It was pretty shocking and we all screamed :) I looked outside afterwards and it didn't look like the lightning hit anything. Guess it just exploded in the air. I do not know.

After chilling for a bit and reading Hunger Games, we headed to the internet cafe. Most everyone in our little group got a computer, but Claire and I would not fit. So we went to another one, which was also full. We could not give up so we walked a bit until we found a third one, which had one computer. Good enough. And it was half the price of the place we were originally going to go to, so it worked out :) So Claire used it for a while, then I got to use it. I found out that one of our goats had kids! So fun. I wish I could be there to see them, but that's okay. Then we came back and I am now going to read some more Hunger Games then get to bed. I'm going to miss Florence.

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