okay so weirdest things first. while i was walking around piazza maggiore, i saw two guys wheeling a fridge down the sidewalk. that was weird by itself. then one guy stopped to take a picture of the other guy wheeling said fridge, then they saw me and insisted i be in the picture as well. that's...totally a normal thing to happen...

today i did touristy things.
first i climbed the taller of the two slanted towers (tower asinelli) in the center of the city. there's a superstition that if you climb it while you're still in school you won't graduate, but i boldly climbed those hundreds of steps anyway. it was worth it too; the view was INCREDIBLE. i could see the whole city and the mountains beyond it! today was a little bit foggy which made the view more mystical as well. i took pictures, so sooner or later you guys will see what i'm talking about. the tower asinelli is 97 meters high, and the other one, the garisenda tower, is 48 meters high i think. the garisenda tower is theoretically more slanted than the tower of pisa!

i went into saint petronius' basilica, and i actually wasn't that impressed. i think it was too hyped up for me, because all the texts i've read were like, they stopped construction so it wouldn't be more amazing than saint peter's at the vatican! it was enormous but pretty plain inside. i use the word "plain" relatively though, because it's not entirely a word than can be used to describe any basilica ever. it was nowhere near the excellence that is saint peter's, so i guess mission accomplished?
i lit candles for everybody in the family.

the last touristy place i went to this afternoon was the archaeologic museum, which was neat. also free.

i've gone up and down about a million steps today, and now i'm crazy exhausted. i don't know what i'm going to do tonight yet, but hopefully it involves copious amounts of sitting.