This morning I had yet another croissant and cappuccino for breakfast. As soon as I was finished we began our walk to the Florentine Leather School. While we were there, we watched an artisan, Francesco, stamp gold designs onto a leather coaster. Each coaster he makes is individual and unique, and he chooses the stamps and patterns. Then, we looked at all of the different types of leather they had, including goat, lamb, deer, ostrich, cow, alligator, and python. We were able to feel them too, and it was cool to see how different they were from each other. We also saw a couple workers assembling and stitching purses. After that, we went down to the actual leather school and saw the students making a variety of bags, and they get to keep everything they make! Then we had the chance to shop in their store, and we could get our initials stampeded onto any item we bought by Francesco.

After the leather school, we had a couple hours of free time, so we got lunch at a little restaurant in the piaza. I was so happy to see zuppa on the menu, so I simply had to order some. I got the pasta e fagioli, and it was better than Olive Garden! Once we were finished eating, we hung out for a while then were off to the Gucci Garden Gallery. There were a few different rooms displaying both past and present Gucci items. It was very aesthetically pleasing, but the clothes were too extravagant for me to even consider wearing.

Next, we were guided through the Museo Galileo, which had some very interesting pieces about time and astrology. However, the main event was the display of Galileo’s severed middle finger. We were ecstatic to see this, because the one fact that we knew about Galileo coming in was that someone ripped his finger off as he was being buried, and this museum is where it was displayed. After all of these tours, we had the rest of the day to ourselves, so we walked down toward the bridge to look at more of Florence’s beauty. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped to get dinner at a little pizzeria and got some food to go.