After that, some of us headed to the internet cafe we had stumbled upon the night before. It was really fast and the guy working there spoke English and was very helpful. I had tried to use the internet the night before at the campsite but it was so freaking slow that it took me 15 minutes just to read a couple emails and delete a couple junk ones. I hadn't really had a chance to read through my emails and post on my blog since I had left London. So I was in heaven for a whole half hour at this internet cafe. After that, we headed to the main square to meet up with the group for our walking tour of Florence. There was an exact replica of the statue of David there, so I decided to just take a picture of that one and not pay the 9 euro to go see the real one. A good decision, I think.
I was surprised at how big it was, but all the scaffolding around it kind of took away from it being really cool. Anyway, our tour started shortly after that and we had to listen to this weird woman for an hour or so. She was very knowledgeable, though, and gave us a good perspective of the history of the place and why certain sculptures were in certain places and their significanes. [Just to point out, while we were in Italy Jase was not allowed by law to give us any kind of tours. Only locals are allowed to do it, in order to protect their tourism industry. However, Jase would occasionally still do it (especially in Rome) to help us out, but would sometimes have to walk off in the middle of a sentence if he saw any cops. It was pretty funny for us.]
Our tour took us from the main square, past the Uffizi gallery (which if I had had more time I would have really liked to have gone in) to the Ponte Vecchio (the Old Bridge). It was a pretty cool bridge and very beautiful.
There are a bunch of shops on the bridge, but they mostly sell lots of crap or expensive jewelry (not that the two are mutually exclusive). We then walked throuh the city some more to the Duomo Cathedral. It was a magnificent building both inside and out. The dome was a fantastic piece of architecture. I think our tour guide said that it was the first dome of its kind.
This picture is of the front of the cathedral, but you can see the reddish dome towards the back. The church also had a really interesting clock inside: it had 24 hours on it, and it measured the start/end of the day at sunset, not midnight.
At this point, our tour ended, and we were all starving and started looking for a place to eat lunch. I still needed an ATM (I think I had one or two euro left at this point) and luckily I found one across the street from the McDonald's where we all settled on. I ran over and popped my card in. Everything was fine until I got this message that said something like "we have been instructed to destroy your card". Aaugh! I literally flipped out. I just kind of froze and didn't know what to do. All sorts of horrible things flashed through my brain and it was all bad. Thank goodness that one second later another message flashed up "you have 30 seconds to remove your card". Phew. I yanked my card out of there and ran across the street to McDonald's. Luckily Vanessa let me borrow some money (thanks!!) so I could eat. I was relieved, but very confused because I knew that I had enough money in my account for the withdrawl. Later on, back at the campsite I was able to get money from their ATM without any problem, so I still don't know what happened. The weird thing is that the same thing happened to Mardi later on in the day at the campsite ATM, so maybe it's just some weird random thing with Italian banks. Who knows?
So after lunch we walked down one of the main shopping streets and I eventually broke off from the group because I wanted to go to the Santa Croce church (of course "Cath" would want to do this - no one was surprised and of course no one came with me). I got some melon gelati on the way there and it was the perfect refreshing snack for such a hot day. The church itself was very unique and interesting. The decorations on the outside were similar in style to the Duomo.
Inside, though, there were all these tombs of important people. Galileo, Michaelangelo, Dante and many other prominent Italians are buried there.
Me being the science dork that i am, took a picture of Galileo's tomb (above). It was kind of relaxing to walk around there, especially since I was by myself and hadn't really had any alone time yet on the trip. After Santa Croce I headed back to meet the bus.
Back at the campsite we had time to do some swimming before we had to go to dinner. It was soo soo hot and the only possible way to cool down was to go to the pool. Unfortunately, Florence has this weird law where everyone who uses a public pool in the city must wear a swimming cap. So, we all had to put on these silly hats just to take a dip in the pool.
It was pretty hilarious. Then, we got ready for the evening out: group photo, the Tuscan dinner and the Space Electronica disco. The group photo was great; it was overlooking the whole city of Florence. The dinner was pretty good too, there was lots of food: bread, some meats and antipasta, a couple types of pasta, and of course wine.
The disco place was pretty fun. They had a really weird system for ordering and paying for drinks, but whatever. I guess it worked. They had karaoke downstairs and a dancefloor and dj upstairs. We started off with the karaoke of course and a bunch of us gave an awful rendition of "Summer Nights" from Grease. Up on the dance floor, I ran into someone I knew from Camp Wayne which was totally and completely random. One of my old campers was there which made me feel really old. Wow, time flies. Anyway, it was pretty fun. We got some free drinks and of course danced the night away. I think I can definitely say that Tash and I definitely had an interesting night, not one soon forgotten.
Back at the campsite, we had to unwind a bit before going to sleep. A few nights before, some of the guys thought it would be really funny to go into Quinn's cabin in the middle of the night (or at least late at night when she was asleep and they weren't) and wake her up with the Australian national anthem. It became a bit of a tradition which Quinn was not too happy about, but it was hilarious to everyone else.
Here is Paul, Kieren, Vanessa, Copper (I think) and Mick singing to Quinn that night. Too funny. Especially when Paul started singing the second verse (apparently he is the only Australian that knows more than just the first verse).
next day...
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