I am now back in Genoa until Saturday. Florence was my favorite city of the ones that we've visited so far. Florence had a lot of great shops and was more condensed and easier to explore than Rome. We were able to climb to the top of the Duomo, to walk across the Ponte Vecchio, to visit a few palaces like the Medicis', and visit the Uffizi Gallery, which had a lot of famous paintings I've studied in my classes, and the Accademia, where I saw Michelangelo's David. Yesterday was our free day, so my friends and I walked up to Piazza Michelangelo where you can see amazing views of the city and also did some shopping. (I got new Italian boots!) We also ran into random people dressed up for Carnevale in a piazza. That's what the first pictures is of. Florence also happened to be having a chocolate fair this weekend. In the piazza in front of Santa Croce, there were about 50 Italian chocolatiers with booths selling their chocolate. We ended up visiting the fair three times in 24 hours. I got awesome hot chocolate, a chocolate brownie covered in melted chocolate, and a fruit on a stick dipped in chocolate. It was delicious. Actually, looking back on it, this was not the healthiest weekend. On Friday, I got a waffle sandwich - which is two scoops of gelato sandwiched between two freshly made waffles. When I ordered it, I had no idea it was going to be so huge (or expensive.) That was probably the biggest mistake of the weekend; I felt so uncomfortably full that I couldn't eat anything for the rest of the day. Last night, a few of us went out to dinner with our professor and had an amazing Italian meal and great wine that I bought a bottle of to take home.

Tonight some people are staying up late to watch the Super Bowl (because of the time difference, it's on in the middle of the night here) but I think I'm heading to bed pretty soon. Tomorrow we have a day off and then Tuesday, we have another day trip scheduled. I only have to get through this week and then we have a 4-day weekend because of Carnevale, and my roommates and I are heading to Madrid!