Firenze and Pisa!

On this trip, every one of us has grown in understanding of the Lord's faithfulness. In so many ways, seen and unseen, our Heavenly Father has taken care of us to make this pilgrimage fruitful and blessed. This past Tuesday, we awoke in Montecatini, a tiny little town outside of Florence, and walked the silent streets to find the Catholic Church for Mass. The other EF group, which has Most Holy Trinity youth and young adults, and students from Northern Arizona University. Father Matt Lowry celebrated the sacrifice of the Mass for us in the beautiful basilica in the center of the town. After Mass we had breakfast, and made our way into Florence. 

Florence, like all other towns and cities in Italy, is centuries old and has ridiculous amounts of history. We were dropped off at the Duomo and the ancient Baptistry and immediately in awe of the exterior of the church. The designer used three different colors of marble to build the church in a very ornamental way with intricate carvings of our Blessed Mother and the Saints. The Baptistry, located detached from the church, contained the Gates of Paradise, the famous gold doors that opened for the belt baptized to leave the Baptistry and enter the church. 

The rest of the day we had free time to explore more churches, museums, take in the smell of real Italian leather, and get some amazing gelato, which was invented in Florence, so you know it was good :). A few of us took the opportunity to hike up the more than 400 stairs up to the top of the dome of the basilica to get beautiful views of all of Florence. FYI, this basilica is the fifth largest in all of europe, so it went very very high. 

The next day, on our way to Switzerland, we stopped in Pisa, another small beautiful city. Besides the tourists and hundreds of pictures being taken of the leaning tower of Pisa, this place was quaint and quiet, and a nice resting place on our way to the Alps.