Ciao!! I hope you are all having a wonderful day and week so far! Today we went to Santa Croce church - this is another gorgeous gorgeous church in Florence, although a difference between this and others is that it is the actual resting place of so many people - I saw the tomb and memorial of Michelangelo, of Galileo Galilee, Marconi (the guy who invented the radio), Ghiberti (he did the gates of paradise) and sooo many more. I was able to take pictures inside - without flash - but unfortunately there was sooo much scaffolding around due to the restoration work that has been going on for about 10 years. Regardless it was very cool. When we entered I was given what looked like a hospital gown to wear - basically, when you enter into these churches your shoulders need to be completely covered (no sleeveless) and. Your knees need to be covered. normally if the dress/shorts hit a little above its ok, and I was wearing pretty long shorts and a shirt with a cardigan, which had been acceptable everywhere else but apparently not at Santa Croce, so I got to wear a burlap sack - if I had had a belt I could have definitely made it fashionable, but cest la vie. I wish I had taken a picture for yall... Haha. So after that we went right next door to the Pazzi Chapel which I loved!, and then we were done. My friend Meredith and I wanted to go to some more modern or contemporary galleries - which are pretty scarce in Florence, but we found the Gallery Biagiotto. Some of the art was very cool, and some was very weird - typical modern I guess. But it was a nice change from renaissance art. Don't get me wrong I love renaissance art, but day after day of pietas, crucifixes and, Madonna and childs - they begin to blur, and its nice to have something fresh to think about, kind of a palette cleanser in a way, ha. Ok, so now to my favorite part of the day - our entire group got tickets to go see Cirque Invisible at the Boboli Gardens for the night. Our teacher said it was like Cirque du Soleil so we were soo excited. Ok - NOT like that at all. It was a very…interesting, one man / one woman magic / random acts show. It was French if that puts anything into perspective. The first half we all sat there in confusion...everyone around us was laughing and thoroughly enjoying it, were we missing something? I had heard European humor was different, but this was cheesy, campy, and not entertaining. It was geared for maybe the intelligence of a 5 year old. But then I got the giggles because it was so not funny, it was funny. During intermission, I decided that I could accept it for what it was - a strange little show - and I would try to enjoy it legitimately. So, it was still pretty funny in the fact that it wasn't funny - but I definitely enjoyed the 2nd half better after just accepting it for what it was. A few of the acts had bunnies and ducks. My roommate - being a hardcore vegan and peta person, was worried about the treatment of them, so I, being an animal lover myself, decided to look into this. I just wanted to share this as a side note, because I found it awesome that not only did I find out they treat their animals well, the reporter who wrote the article said that the two performers change outside their dressing rooms because they give their dressing rooms to their animals, and that they only talked about their animals during the interview...kinda cooky but endearing. Also the woman in the show is the great grandaughter of charlie chaplin, which was cool. I just thought that was all kinda interesting. Anyways, that was my day! Jam-packed with churches, art, weird French shows and cute animals. :) Love you all! Until next time, Liorah