Not your traditional school day...

Florence can really wear you out if you are there ALL day long.
When we left at 8 am yesterday, as we were walking down the hill we had the chance to see this.

One of the classes that about 2/3 of the students here are in had to do a pictorial scavenger hunt in Florence yesterday. Those of us that were not in the class were to go along and visit places that looked of interest to us and to kind of help be navigators for those that had not been into the city as much.

I spent the morning with my group and then around 10:30 Libby, Tyler, Nathan and I broke off and kind of did our own thing. We went to Zara which is this 4 floor clothing store which was FANTASTIC and tried on clothes for a while and then...we went across the street to the other half of it :]
We met our group on top of la Rinascente for cappucinos and hot chocolate as part of our assignment. Can you believe that I'm getting graded for sitting on a balcony to look out over the city? This is my hot chocolate.

It was more like chocolate soup.
I had to eat it with a spoon.

After that we crossed the Ponte Vecchio and went to a place called Trattoria Quattro Leoni (paid for!) to eat lunch...again...I'm getting graded to eat at fancy restaurants and try to order in Italian. This was my meal --- it was two or three crepes filled with spinach and mozzarella and then baked and covered in melted cheese...mmm!

I ate most of it -- I'm trying to be adventuresome.

We continued down and met our entire group + Robbie, Dr. Garner, Mona Lee, Dr. Hopper, etc and put on our whisperers (headphones that allow us to hear whomever is talking on the lead one) and took a tour of the religious center of Florence. We went to the baptistry, Santa Maria del Fiore (il Duomo) and the Museum of the works of the Duomo. At one point Carla our tour guide for the day led us down a side street to the workshop where they do all the restoration of the marble exterior and any other statue/exterior decoration. You could see inside where they were making replicas and doing repairs. As we turned back to the dome I was able to get this awesome shot -

I mean, I'll have hundreds of shots of the Duomo before it's all said and done with, but I thought this one was particularly neat.

By about 6 we were done with the group stuff so Leigh, Libby and I roamed the stores and went to a Caffe/Panini place and had awesome croissants and fantastic....gelato!
We went to the Odeon Cinema where they show English movies with Italian Sub-titles and we saw The Bucket List...the movie was okay but the best part was...

the theater! This photo doesn't nearly do it justice. I have many more pictures of it. It was very very grand. And there was even an intermission! It was neat.

After chasing some buses we made it back to the villa. I know we walked tons yesterday. Last time we were in Florence for 6 or 8 hours and we walked 15 miles... (a pedometer was worn)...so no telling yesterday!

Ciao!