Florence, Italy

The next morning we got off to kind of a late start. We were planning to go to Rome again but ended up missing the train and decided to go to Florence instead. It's about a 2 hour train ride to either city from where we were camped at. After arriving at around one in the afternoon we went straight to the Galleria Academia to see Michaelangelo's David. Somehow we've been pretty lucky with lines so far in Italy. We didn't really have to wait at the Colloseum or at the Vatican but for this museum we ended up waiting in the sun for around an hour. It was well worth it, though! David is probably the most detailed and clean sculpture I have ever seen. The Donatello painting of Cupid is in the same museum usually but I guess there was some exhibition in Tokyo that had it for the week. Next, we went to Galleria Degli Uffizi where we saw the "Birth of Venus" and many other famous paintings from many famous artists, including all of the Ninja Turtles. After that we tried to go to the Giardino de Boboli but it was closed for some kind of private party so we just went to an internet point to try to plan out the weekend for Kristen's Birthday. Coming home that night we had another interesting "learning experience." By the time we finished talking to Kristen and made it to the train station we were catching the last train back to Castiglion del Lago. Well, in the dark we had a hard time making out the stops and ended up missing ours because one of the doors was broken and wouldn't open for us. When we got off at the next stop there was no train going back the other way untill the morning. Lucky for us there happened to be a taxi waiting right outside the train station in this small town called Chiusi. After a 35 euro cab ride we made it back to our camp around midnight. I think we have bad luck riding the train at night! The next day we went out for our second day in Rome.