Michelangelo's David.

Today was a really amazing day! Today we woke up early as a group around 7:00 and traveled by bus to Florence. Florence is only a little more than an hour away, so we got to spend the entire day there. The city was huge and reminded me a lot of Rome. It was crowded, dirty and had a lot of old buildings everywhere. There was also a lot of beggars which was really scary. They get really close to you and don't leave you alone. We went to Florence for my HUM201 class, and we got to go to an archaeological museum that had a lot of the egyptian statues and things that we have been studying in class. I got to see the famous portrait of Nephratiti and lots of mummies. I learned that the coffins you see that are shaped close to the body and covered in paint is only for the rich, or upper class. I got to see a lot of coffins that were made out of cheap wood or something like that. It was really cool to see how life was like for the people who lived in that era. It was really interesting. We also got to see an old Renascence Baby Hospital. I guess what they would do, is have the women come in to have their babies, and then take them away from them to clean them and stuff like that. They would leave a coin with the baby and then give a matching coin to the mother so that they would know who's baby was who's. A lot of the times, the mothers would just leave their children there. If they had a baby with a man they were not married to, they would get in a lot of trouble, so they would leave their babies with the hospital. They could come back years later and bring the coin to see if they could see their children they left. I guess it turned into an orphanage after a while. It was pretty sad to hear about.

After that we had lunch, and then we got to see Michelangelo's David. It was one of the coolest things I have never seen. I have never appreciated it before, but I was suprised how amazing it was. It is 15 feet tall of pure marble. I guess marble is really hard to carve out of. We think it is hard, but I guess marble is really soft. It was amazing to see. It is against the law to take a picture of the David....but I took like 5. You can get kicked out of the area for it. I felt sneaky. Recently the country cleaned the David statue and they found 3 letters on the left calf of David. The letters are MNL. We believe that those letters are the signature of Michelangelo. It is weird because he never signs any of his artwork. He believed he was famous and a good enough artist that people would just recognize his work and he wouldn't have to sign it. I guess he was a snot. But he was really good.

Anyways, Today was really cool!