Day 6: The David.

Bright and early we greeted the ever informative tour guide Tawnya. It was raining and due to my lack of packing an umbrella, I ran back in to see if the hotel concierge had a garbage bag I could wear for protection. When I told him what it was for, he laughed and gave me some classy pick up line while handing me his umbrella. It was a kind gesture. We went to the Uffizi Gallery and I’ve never seen such high security: you had to dump out all water bottles, go through security checks, there was bullet proof glass over every painting, alarm lasers that went off in the event that an eager onlooker got too close, and security personnel in each room. We saw the safely guarded Tribute Money, and the Damnation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve. So incredible! Right after that we went to the Accademia where we saw quite a few of Michelangelo’s unfinished works, and then the magnificent David! It was so much larger than I imagined it to be, perfectly chiseled and exuding victory. There are not enough adjectives to describe how marvelous a creation The David is! I sat in amazement, I couldn’t look away so I stared for 10 memorable minutes. We exited the museum and started our sketching tour. We sat on a bridge right across from Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Florence covered in jewelry shops, and sketched it. Asians were fascinated by this, and began photographing my almost amusingly bad sketches. We continued with 2 more hours of sketching in a lovely park. Sketching is not my forte, I would rather take a mediocre photograph, or pay someone a few Euros to capture what I’m looking at. Professor Brooks told us of a chapel overlooking all of Florence that he said would be worth the hike and that we should all go. He forgot to mention that if you were to put your treadmill on the highest incline atop treacherous coble stone steps, then that would be equal to the rigorous hike we endured. But the view was BEAUTIFUL! We also heard the chanting of the monks at the chapel, the view beat the chanting. Tawnya recommended a pizza place for us to go to, and after the first bite Toto’s became my favorite pizza place of all time.