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Hi Everyone. From Perugia we took a train to Florence that took 2+ hours and spent our first night in the 5 bed dorm hostel. The next day we saw the Leonardo da Vinci museum of his inventions that never got published. We also saw a Cezanne retrospective in Florence. He was the first impressionist to paint more abstract art. After that we checked out David but couldn´t go in because the line was over 2 hours long. We waited in line for the Duomo which is one of the biggest churches in Firenze. We ate lunch and saw a remake of David probably by one of his students out in front of the Uffizi Museum. We also saw a mime called Grey that was really funny and a bit crazy.Our second day in Florence we saw church Lorenza, Nostello and Bargello Museum. At the San Lorenzo museum we saw books that were hand written and drawn by scribes. It is also the first church ever built in Firenze. The Nostello Church had art by great artists between the years of 1300 to 1900´s. Many of the paintings were on loan to other museums. The Bargello took a half hour to find but in the end they had about 150 marble and stone sculptures. I liked the sculpture where David chopped off Goliath´s head. The next morning around 5:30 a.m. we got up and waited to check out so we could get a train from Florence to the Carrera marble mines. The Carrera marble mines are the largest in the world. We hiked for 2 hours around the mines. We hiked from the train station to Riomaggio to Monorale to continue our hike the next day at Cinque Terra. Cinque Terra are 5 towns on the north coast of Italy that you can only get to by walking. That night at the hostel, I played soccer with an older man and it was really fun. On April 4th we hiked from Monorale to Monteresso which is the last town in Cinque Terra. It took 6 hours to walk 10 miles on rugged terrain. We woke up the next day exhausted and took a bus to 80,000 year old caves but we couldn´t go in because the tour guides weren´t doing their job that day! Supposedly, the caves had 10´ stillagmites however, we will never know. We then took a train through the south of France, called la cote dázur, to Nice. We checked into a hostel and had Malaysian food. We couldn´t stand Nice because it was crowded and a tourist trap. So, we went to Nimes and then took a train to Arles where my dad and I saw our first bullfight. There were six bulls and 3 matadors and each matador got to slaughter 2 bulls each. The first matador was bad because he stabbed the bull through the lung instead of through the shoulder blades directly to the heart. The second matador was a mexican guy that was the best of all because he got all the spears in an didn´t make the bull suffer. After the bulls were dead, they were drug out of the ring by 2 big horses. From Nimes, we drove with a Scottish friend to Barcelona on 4.9.07 where we met my mom, sister and family friend Peter. We all ate dinner that night at midnight where I had my first tapas (small plates with a variety of fish and veggies with paella. On the 10th, we visted every single building designed by Antonio Gaudi: La Sagrada Famillia (pictured above), Guell Park, Casa Mila, Casa Vicens and others. Gaudi was an architect that was inspired by nature in all his designs. For example, in Guell park there were mosaic lizards, frogs, flowers and trees. The La Sagrada Famillia has been a work in progress since 1876. It was amazing. All the gates and steel work were sculpted to look like palm frons. His buildings were round and curvy like the rolling sands of deserts. We walked over 8 miles that day and I was delirious. I didn´t eat much dinner because I fell asleep at the table. We´re now on our way through the Pyrennes so Ciao for now...Jairn
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