Gelato, Gelato, Gelato.....Gelato

That's right I had Gelato four times this weekend, and it was divine, I'm definitely going to miss it when I'm back in the states. This was a long amazing beautiful weekend, and I took lots of pictures to share with you all.
Friday we left at nine thirtyish and stopped twice along the way for restrooms and food. Being lent no meat was allowed for my diet, I ended up eating a spinach sandwich, not all that terrible actually. The five hour bus ride was very cool as the bus was double decker and Becca and I sat in the front on top with a great view of the countryside. Once we were at our hotel, we checked in and discovered our room hadn't been cleaned, we were told we would get a new one after we returned from our walking tour. Our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable, and spoke wonderful English. The absolute first thing we saw were the Gates of Paradise, on the baptistery (the first picture). It was wonderful because of the slightly rainy weather there was no crowd and I got some pretty great pictures :) We then went into the duomo, which I thought was the Italian word for dome, turns out it's a rank of church, dome is cuppola. After the duomo, which is one of very few Gothic style churches in Italy, we went to the museum that is home to the original David. It was incredibly impressive. I wasn't really expecting to be so in awe of this statue as I was more excited for the Gates of Paradise, but it is impossible to look at this statue and not understand why it is so important. Also David is a hunk ;) Our tour ended inside the museum, and it only took ten more minutes to cover the rest of the exhibits, there wasn't much else to it. We had nothing else scheduled until the following morning, so Becca and I decided to go back and change our room before anything else. We got a major room upgrade. We moved down a floor, to the only room in the hotel with a balcony. Our room was bigger, as was the bathroom, and we had separate beds. Becca and I decided if we don't like our next room we're going to mess it up, and ask for a new one.
After the room change we wandered the streets of Florence for awhile, which are much safer and cleaner than those of Rome, and there are considerably less of them. We searched for a restaurant within our price range, that had vegetarian options that I would eat. We found a place called Mamma Mia, the food was excellent and cheap. We both ordered a dish with spaghetti noodles, tomato sauce, cream, and mozzarella cheese. The portion sizes were enormous, it was a wonderful meal. We window shopped for an hour or so after, stopping to take pictures of old churches, and beautiful statues. Next was the first Gelato purchase of the trip. I got kitkat and cherry, the cherry was amazing!! The man behind the counter gave us a deal, "just for us" I thought he was ripping us off, but then he showed us the size of gelato we should have gotten for what we paid, and he wasn't kidding. We found out why when we went to leave, he wanted us to go to a club with him. We said no thanks and headed for the hotel. The best part about the night was the steaming hot twenty five minute shower I took, It was amazing after weeks of cold showers, and a day of walking, and a long bus ride.