We set out on our own today in groups of three to explore the many museums Florence has to offer. As the home town of 
Michelangelo and once renowned Medici family, who controlled Florence during the Renaissance and collected many famous works of art, this city brought to it many famous works of art which still exist for public display. My group began the morning by visiting Florence’s Science Museum, which housed Galileo’s middle finger, a variety of old telescopes, and other early scientific instruments with which Galileo and others experimented with.
After spending some time here, my group, which included Elizabeth and Mitch, ventured into the open air market that caters towards tourists, similar to what one would see in Mexico or other American vacation destinations. After bargaining, bartering, and buying, we came out with a few nice gifts for friends and of course, a few items for personal use.
We then ventured to the Medici chapel museum, which turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Michelangelo carved multiple sculptures in this domed building, which the rich and powerful family used as its personal church. In this museum, several members of the family lay buried beneath figures carved by Michelangelo, a surprise we happily discovered after entering the museum.
We ate lunch at a quaint little Italian café, and then rejoined the large group for an hour long train ride to the (in)famous Pisa. Pisa, of course, is home to the world’s most popular architectural fiasco, the leaning tower of Pisa. The group spent awhile posing for the camera, pretending to hold the tower up or push it over. 
We then examined the nearby church, which was another major engineering failure. Besides the fact that this building also sank, causing some goofy and obviously improvised construction, the building was a conglomerate of many different blocks of marble and brick scavenged from across Italy. The inside though, presents a completely different picture. The church possesses an intricately sculpted pulpit, and other wonderful works of art.
After viewing the church and the tower, Forrest gave us a lecture on the development of the scientific method, looking especially at Galileo. In fact, it was in Pisa that Galileo came up with the idea that the time of a pendulum swing was the same regardless of size, and it was on the 
Tower of Pisa that he tested the hypothesis that objects fell at the same rate regardless of weight. The lecture looked at the development of thought concerning the nature of the universe, tracing it through Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, and finally, Kepler.
The group then boarded the bus to return to the train station, and we took a train back to Florence. After dinner and some shopping, the group boarded the train for Paris! We each got to be in a room with three other people, and each person had a bunk for the 12 hour ride to the capital of France.
--Aaron Korthuis
