This was a lonnnnng day. We hopped on a train pretty early in the morning and headed for Florence. The train was one of the fancy high-speed trains! Super neat to be on. The little screens on the train showed the route it would be taking, as well as the speed as we went along. The maximum I saw it get up to was 250 km/h. HOLY F%$@! I tried getting a cool timelapse of the trip but there were so many tunnels along the way that it didn't turn out very well.

Once in Florence, we hit up the closest McDonalds. No, I'm not kidding. We didn't have time for breakfast before we left the hotel in the morning, and we knew McD's would be quick enough that we wouldn't be late for our tour of Florence. I'm glad we went in because I've been seeing McDonald's all over Germany and Italy and was curious how different their menu was from ours. Turns out, some things are pretty damn different (ie, McLobster).

Oh, one thing I keep forgetting to mention is how bizarre it is that so many places in Europe charge you to use their bathrooms. Like in McDonalds, you have to pay 50 cents each to use the bathroom.

Our tour of Florence started, and we went up to the square that originally had Michelangelo's David in the center. This square had such an amazing view of the Florence skyline. (Pictures in album). We also passed interesting buildings along the way, like Tchaikovsky's house (where he wrote one of his most famous operas - The Queen of Spades), Galileo's house (!), and a house where Da Vinci lived in and painted the Mona Lisa. Pretty badass.

We saw the enormous church in Florence, but couldn't go in because it was Sunday and there were important holy things happening inside.

After the church, we went to the gallery that held a lot of important statues and carvings - most importantly, the statue of David. I'd seen pictures of this statue before, on TV and in books. It was always mildly interesting, but never anything I'd paid much attention to. Now I understand. The intricate and accurate detail that went into this massive sculpture is mindblowing. Plus the sheer size of it shocked me. I always thought it would be around the height of an average man. Nope, definitely lie twelve or fourteen feet high. It was shocking. And like I said, the perfect details in like the hands and feet, the neck, the hair… So freaking cool.

Once we were done here, it started absolutely pouring, which was kind of a bummer. Oh well.

We boarded a bus that sent us to Pisa next. I don't remember much of the details we learned here, but it was very interesting at the time. Lots of buildings and architecture dating back to the 1100's. Also, the Leaning Tower is more of a banana shape than a linear tower because of the builders trying to correct the lean. And there are as many idiots doing the stupid pose infront of it as you think there are.

After Pisa we headed back to Florence on the bus, then caught the last high-speed train out of Florence heading back to Rome. We had left this morning at 6:30am, and my head didn't hit my pillow in the hotel until 11:00pm. I was wiped.