Florence, Italy July 10-12

Dear Family and Friends,

These are some of my photos from my trip to Florence. The weekend I spent there was very fun. We visited the Uffizi, which is a huge art gallery. It took us three hours to go through it all. Within this gallery were able to see the famous Birth of Venus and La Primavera by Botticelli, Tondo Doni by Michelangelo, Venus of Urbino by Titian, and Medusa
by Caravaggio. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of these amazing paintings because we are not allowed to take photographs within the museum. But I encourage you to look them up online to get a visual of what I saw, they are beautiful. We also went to the Academia, which has Michelangelo's David. It was an awe inspiring moment seeing the David. It is very big, much taller than I had expected. The figure has so much detail down to the veins in his arms and hands. When I turned the corner and saw the statue of him I instantly got the chills. I was not able to get any photos of it because we were not allowed to. They had the guards on high alert there. We also went to the Duomo, which is a huge church. The outside of the church was one of the most decorative I have seen during my trip in Italy. The top photo is of the Duomo, sorry that it is sideways. The bottom two photos show the inside of the church, as well as the third photo which is of the ceiling. The second photo from the top is of me in front of the ponte vecchio, which is one of the oldest bridges in Italy. The fourth photo from the top is of the gothic church Santa Croce. Overall I had a wonderful trip in Florence, it was easy to maneuver around the city and I enjoyed each place we visited.

Love to All,
Elena