Today was awesome.

I was in orence and it was crazy stupid fun and

stressful. We started the day o! at eight thirty climbing the duomo, which
was worth it but still totally stressful at the same time. The actual climb up
the duomo was something around 500 steps(check later) and to make it
even harder the widths of the stairs was about a foot and a half and the
virtical was pretty bad at some points. There was also a point where you
were on a wooden plank going around the top of the duomo, but you
could see into the church and it was basically like the wood was sticking
out and 200 feet down was the whole church. It was a bit frightening.
Actually, I was very frightened, to be honest, but another one of the girls
in my group was taking it worse. She had like claustrophobia and started
crouching down on the ground at one point. We got her water and she
slowly got better but it was still pretty scary. The view, however, was the
opposite of scary. It was wildly refreshing and spectacular. I can't wait to
upload the photos.

After this, which took about an hour and a to get up and down, it was
10:10, I got a quick breakfast, and headed to the academia. While I
enjoyed seeing the statue of David, I was literally only at the academia for
20 minutes, and unless my family wanted to go I wouldn't go again. So it
was around 11:20 and my next booked museum was the u#zi at 3:45 so I
had a lot of time to myself. I did A LOT.

First o!, I went to three di!erent churches, took some pictures, and then
carried on. That took about an hour and a half. Cool, still have 3 hours to
go. I then hopped on up to the bell tower, which took another hour and
like a million more steps, but I did it, and at that point I was pretty tired.

Then I went to the palazzo vecchio museum, and up 6 more ights
upstairs to beautiful sculptures, paintings, and frescoes. Although I was
super tired at this point, I thought might as well do it, because honestly,
when is the next time I'll be in orence? I need to do as much as possible.

After this, I took an hour break, got some lunch, and then headed to the
u#zi. While it was magical and everything, I was also sad because there
was a lot of closed buildings, like all of William Adolphe Bourgereau's
things were closed and he's my favorite painter ever. So that was super
sad. Nevertheless, I spent 2.5 hours there exploring everything and even
went back to the start twice just so I wouldn't miss anything. I do wish I
would have gotten an audio guide though, so I would know some
background to the history of the art, but I'm poor and didn't want to
spend the money doing so, so there you go. Another day, another trip. I
did nd a piece of art I loved. It was I believe called The Massacre of the
Innocents, and it was a gruesome scene, but the emotions portrayd on
the faces of every man, woman and child were captivating. I must have
stared at it for 5 minutes.

After I nished here I went back to the hotel and at 8pm we nally met up
with the boys to get dinner. We hadn't been able to meet them anywhere
because of the lack of cell phone use, but we nally could. Unfortunately,
you can't really get really get an open seat in orence for 12 people, and
after searching for about 45 minutes for a place to sit, tensions rising,
stomachs growling and people all wanting di!erent things, our groups
split up. Nobody was particularly happy about it, but hunger out weighted
our happiness on the matter, so there you go. The food was small but
taste, but small. And small. I was left wanting from my pea soup, and in
lieu of a big dinner got gelato. It was excellent.



Now I'm here chilling. That's all for now.