Most of the day, we spent finishing things up in Florence. I took a better picture of the Duomo for you.
We went to visit another art gallery, Uffizi, first thing in the morning. By the size of the line we quickly realized we should have bought tickets ahead of time. On the bright side, there were employees standing beside the line selling last minute reserved tickets. So for about five euros extra we bought some, and got in at least an hour faster than we would have otherwise. Once again, we weren't allowed to take pictures, but we sort of sneakily did anyway. At least, Megan did and I sort of stood in the way. But anyway, there were paintings from people like Leonardo da Vinci, some other people I wasn't familiar with, and Boticelli, who painted Megan's favourite painting, The Birth of Venus.
There were also many, many statues - most of them busts. I got to show off my Roman History knowledge by knowing who a bunch of the busts were - Emperors Otho, Vespasian, Vitellius, Titus, Domitian, Galba, Trajan, Hadrian being the ones people are less likely to know. Of course everyone knows Julius Caesar and Augustus. We also saw some statues we learned about in our archaeology class. The statue of Laocoon and his sons being killed by a snake (I can't remember the exact mythological story behind it), and the statues of the Niobids. Their story I do sort of know. The mother, Niobe, had a bunch of children and bragged about how great they were. The gods got angry and sent Apollo and Artemis to kill the whole family. The set of statues we saw has each child on their own, except the largest one of the set is the mother trying to protect one of her daughters.
We were in the museum until noon, when we left and headed back over to the Duomo but this time got to go inside. It wasn't as decorated as the cathedral in Pisa, but it was huge. We also got to go underneath it, which was amazing. A sign said that there were the remains of up to four older churches beneath the Duomo. There wasn't too much to see, but there were some fragmented mosaics and intricate carvings. (For those who know who Finn is, if he ever ends up in catacombs under a cathedral, this is why).
After eating a late lunch we picked up our bags from the hostel and got on a train for two hours, to the place we're staying tonight, Orvieto. This is one of the cute little hilltop towns I mentioned earlier. It was late but we had a little time to look around, so we went to this city's Duomo (Duomo di Orvieto) and took some pictures from the outside. We plan to go inside tomorrow.
The streets here are so tiny, it doesn't seem like cars should be able to fit, but they do anyway! We saw at least six cats while we wandered. We then found a nice place to take some pictures of the great view. There was even a little castle-esque thing in the distance.
Tomorrow we'll have a better look around before heading to Rome to meet up with some of the people who are arriving for the dig.
Also, for fun, I took a picture of some euros with a Canadian twenty for reference.
(Edited and extra photos added May 2019)