The Statue of David

(Copy of) The David - no photos allowed of the real one at the acadamy!
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Another early start today to beat the traffic to Florence. This was a day trip from Montecatini where we were scheduled for a tour of the acadamy that houses the "David". This went very smoothly with the obligatory security check with bag xray on the way in. The local guide was very good, giving us lots of detail about Michealangeo and how sculptors worked in those early times. He also gave us informative info on attempts people had made to damage the David, which is now protected by bullet proof glass.

Waiting in the Churcb for the Ceremonial Fire-lighting to begin on Easter Sunday.
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The tour group then walked on to a leather factory where we were shown an example of leather guilding. Florence is apparently the place to go for leather products and gold jewlery in Italy. We were then given a fashion show of their leather clothing products where they picked people from our tour group to model the jackets etc. There was then the expected pressure to buy something from there. I had a look around as I have been interested for quite a while in getting a leather jacket. Unfortunately I didn't find one at this shop to suit my size and shape (even though the saleswomen said - you only have two to choose from here - she seemed to forget about the 100 other shops in Florence - funny that). We were then given three hours of free time to wander around.

Leather, Leather everywherre...

It was a rainy cold day and my head cold, which had been feeling better in the morning, was quickly re-developing. After stopping for something to eat we continued on our quest to find me a leather jacket, finally finding one that I liked in a camel colour. While I was paying for this, Joe and Paula moved onto the next shop. When I caught up with them Paula had found a jacket that she really liked - but it wasn't quite the right size. They said they would make her a custom fitted one for the same price and post it home to Australia for 40 euros - this was too good to pass up so Paula decided to get it. Us girls had really scored!! We stopped for our daily gelati, wandered around a bit more before meeting up with the tour group and returning on the bus to our hotel. I went straight to sleep for a couple of hours before our tour dinner at 8pm.

The tour guide suggested that Joe and I take a walk to the Pharmacy after dinner and buy some chesty cough medicine to try and help improve my cold, which was moving down to my chest. I packed up my medicine chest and went for a walk, picked up some expectorant then straight back to the hotel and went to bed. I was just drifting off to sleep after a nice hot shower when I started to hear what sounded like fireworks at about 11pm. Joe opened the curtain, and sure enough, there were fireworks going off which we could see from lying in bed. We couldn't believe however that they continued for nearly half an hour. I quickly went off to sleep after they were finished.