I was really having a shitty day until the City of Firenze came through with a really great fireworks show!  The fireworks lasted for about an hour and they had some really cool stuff, some that made some really cool sounds.  Yesterday I had a really cool time with Nicola, she really is a great lady and fun to hang out with.  The night before we hooked up for about an hour or so and agreed we'd meet the next day to see a few sites in Firenze.  So yesterday at 10:00am we met and walked into town and made our way over to a museum where the David was on display.  We walked the entire museum within a few hours.  Everything is in Italian so it's difficult to figure some stuff out.  Anyway we walked the entire museum and we were both confused about what statues were supposed to be The David.  We asked and were a little surprised to discover the statues.  They really weren't what we expected. 

After the museum we walked back towards the Piazza della Duomo and walked through the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.  After walking through the Cathedral we decided to make the ascent to the top of the cupola, but first we got some take-away for lunch and went back and stood in line.  The top of the Cupola is some 90 meters above the foundation and has some 463 stairs, woa!  It was a nice little climb, where some of the stairs curve directly up the side of the Cupola, unreal.  You also get a very nice view of the artwork on the inside of the Cupola.  We were hurting a little by the time we got close to the top of the Duomo.  There were a lot of people who were getting off the top when we were trying to ascend the last few meters.  When we finally got to the top the view was absolutely amazing.  I probable took 10 pictures from the top, you can see for many miles at that elevation.  We hung out at the top of the Cupola for quite some time, it was really very nice.  Before we made out decent we got our bearing over to the flea market Nicola wanted to walk through on the way to the train station. 

We walked through the market, they had mostly leather and jewelry items.  At the end of the market, Nicola ran into some friends she had met on the train from Roma.  We decided to met up later for dinner which was cool by me.  We made our way to the train station and Nicola showed me how to use the automatic ticket machine, she is so cool.  The ATM was really neat, especially because there is no other human interaction.  Maybe I'll use it to buy my ticket to Siena tomorrow!  We were both tired so we decided to walk back to the camp and then regroup to head back into town for dinner.  On out way back we stopped by a grocery store for some water, I really needed some acqua!  We got back and I drank my first 1,5 liter of water and started on my second.  I also shaved my head and face, taking a lot of dead skin off as well.  I was also going to take a nap, which I did. 

At 7:30pm we made our way to the meeting point for dinner.  It took about 35 minutes to get down there and was a nice addition to our exercise for the day.  We met up with these other Aussies, Shane, Fiona and Diane, I think I have their names correct, well maybe one out of the three at least.  These Aussies are great fun, they all live together and they are majorly silly.  Shane is also in the IT world, so we had a lot to talk about.  We had a good time at dinner, with about 4 or 5 bottles of cheap, but very tasty white wine.  I had forgotten that white wine really kills me the next day, oh well.  After dinner we made our way over to this Irish pub and drank some more until about 1:30am or so.  We were getting out of control and having a great time.  We all might try to hook up sometime in August or September, that would be really cool.  When we decided to leave the girls gave me an Italian good bye, kisses on the checks.  Nicola and I boogied back to camp, I think we walked faster back because we got back around 2:00am!  I gave Nicola a hug and a Ciao bella before we parted ways for the evening.  It really sucks she bailed out to Venezia so hopefully we'll meet up in the U.K.