"I'm Sure You've All Heard about Italian Drivers,.....Professional Killers."

Mercoledi, Febbraio 3:

Today was our second field trip, to Florence! The train ride was about 1.5 hours. Florence is such a neat city. It is a lot flatter than our little medieval hilltown of Castiglion Fiorentino. Our tour guide, Natale "just call me Nat" was pretty good; very knowledgeable. He threw in a few fun comments during the morning like, "Be careful crossing the street, I'm sure you've all heard by now, Italian drivers, professional killers". The day was long; we tracked 7 miles total (the most so far!) It would have been a lot better if the sun had come out some.

We ate lunch as a whole group (all 80 of us from 3 different schools) at Trattoria del Panello. It was really good. Lunch was rigatoni with red sauce, tortellini with ricotta and spinach for the first course, second course was fried pork and fries (zucchini and potato), and ice cream with fudge for dessert.

After lunch we went to our history of science class with professor Giovanni D'Pasquale. He gave us a tour of Florence's science museum (soon to be Museo Galileo) where we saw a room of books dating back to the 16th century, the library that overlooks Ponte Vecchio, and Galileo Galilei's right middle finger!

Walking back to the train station we saw the Duomo of Florence. We just turned the corner and there it was! I was in awe and a bit of shock at first, and when I finally found some words the only thing I could say was WOW! We made it back in plenty of time for dinner of cavatapi, roast beef, mashed potatoes, and a dried fruit tort.














(Santa Maria Novella)













(Sculpture outside of Santa Croce)
















(Inside Santa Croce)













(Some wood detailing in the ceiling of Santa Croce)















(the original Statue of Liberty, 'Liberty Enlightening the World'; it represents liberty of peotry and freedom of art in general)





























(Outside the Pazzi Chapel)








































(Inside the Pazzi Chapel)





















(A nice bit of modern landscape architecture (minus the trashcan!))




















(an astrology/time clock at Galileo Museo)














(some books from the historic archives at the museum, these are from 1721)
















(historic world map; made with the Garden of Eden at the center)




















(Galieo Galilei's right middle finger)

















(a glimpse of the Duomo of Florence)
















(our professor, Tony in front of the church that fronts the Duomo)



















(A little bit of irony. I shouldn't have to explain this one....)