Thursday, October 28th

picnic lunch :)

So today Luke and I woke up and decided to go to Florence for the day. Pisa is a beautiful little town, but only has so much to offer, train tickets were only 5,80, the ride was only 70 minutes, and we really wanted to see another Italian city -- so off to Florence we went!!

in front of the churches

We got to Florence around lunch time. I grabbed a sandwich from a local market and we ate a picnic lunch in the grass in front of a gorgeous church. It turned out to be a really nice day -- FINALLY!!

For the majority of the day we just wandered around the city, stopping anywhere that was free!! A lot of the churches had this white and green theme on the exterior. They reminded me a little of Chautauqua colors! They were super pretty! 

resting in the Plaza, having a
little karaoke sesh

Luke and I ended up stopping to rest in a town square across the river. It was really peaceful, even though there were tons of tourists. There was even a local musician playing the guitar/harmonica and singing in English. Naturally Luke and I sang along. HILARIOUS! :) People must have known I was Lee Wagers's daughter because I must have been asked to take pictures of couples at least half a dozen times!!

river in Florence

I think my favorite church so far in Europe was the last one we went to in Florence, Santa Maria del Santo Spirito. It didn't look like much from the outside and we almost skipped it. The church was practically empty, but had a ton of really beautiful paintings. My favorite was a one of Jesus talking to an adulteress. I loved how  the painter, Alessandro Allori, captured the compassion and forgiveness of Jesus. 

The church also had a crucifix sculpted by Michelangelo at the age of 18. It was incredible! All of the details that he put into the muscles and tendons, which ones would have been flexed and defined from the position Jesus was in. AMAZING! 

sweet fountain

By this point it was getting to be about 4, so we started heading back in the direction of the train station. We stopped outside a castle and a bunch of really sweet statues! There was also an awesome fountain. Idk who it really was of, but I'd like to pretend it was Zeus. It's weird to see all these statues of naked men! haha!

We finally got back to the train station just in time to catch the 5:57 train! Great timing, I'd say! We got back to Pisa just after 7 and headed straight to a restaurant our receptionist suggested in Pisa. Oh my goodness it was SO good! We both ordered tortellinis in alfredo sauce with ham and regular cokes. Luke totally copied me.  He wants to be me I'm pretty sure.

delicious dinner!!

Back at the hostel we took books to the common room and sat around reading and Facebooking. Obviously I'm working on my blog too!! We were planning on going on a pub crawl with our hostel, but it doesn't start until 11 pm. We've got an early wake up call, so we've opted just to head to bed pretty soon so we can live it up again tomorrow! :)