Firenze, Italia

Florence is the third city of our Italian adventure so if you have not read about Milan and Venice yet, you should scroll down. Also, if you are not able to leave me comments, you should scroll even farther down and read my entry titled, "Follow my blog" so you know what to do and we can keep in touch!!

Tuesday, Feb. 3 cont.
Once again, we had a good location very close to the train station and the Duomo in Florence, but it was certainly a very different scene than Venice. This was very city-like, but different than Granada. We arrived at the hostel to find a sign taped to the door saying "call this number when you arrive." We had to wait about a half hour to get in, but once we did it was very nice. Our room was HUGE!! Check out the pics. We were very hungry (like always haha) and we set out to look for a restaurant. We found a place that looked nice and when we tried reading the menu outside, we realized that it was all in Japanese!! We were so confused and about to walk away when we saw a man laughing at us and waving us inside. He said you are not Japanese are you? Then he showed us the menu in English (this was obviously a very touristy place!) and we decided to stay. It was very nice inside, and (like most of Italy during these 10 days) full of Japanese people. We found out that Florence has more tourists than residents living in the city...which just baffles me! The food was really good and our waiter "Dustin" was absolutley hilarious!! He spoke to us with a New Jersey accent and when we asked him where he was from, he said he was from there. Of course 10 minutes later he told us that he was really from Italy and he just liked the New Jersey accent. We asked him how he learned English and he said he just picked it up in this restuarant and through people he met - so you can obviously see how many tourists come there!! He gave us free pizza bread when we were done eating because I think we were entertaining him. haha We got gelato before going home and went to bed exhausted from travelling.

Wed. February 4
We had breakfast in an adorable little nook in the hostel, and then went to The Gallery of the Accademia di Belle Arti which houses DAVID!! Michelangelo's David (1504) was one of the best things I saw on the entire trip. He has been in the Gallery since 1873 when they took him from the Piazza della Signoria (Which we also saw) to protect him from the weather. We saw replicas of him around Florence but seeing the real thing was sooooo amazing. I honestly can barely remember the rest of the art gallery - I stared at David for at least an hour. (We totally took illegal pics of him too so check them out haha.) The gallery also has a really cool instrument museum that was begun by the Medici family! We also saw the Duomo which was really cool on the outside and unlike anything else we had seen. Later, we went to the Piazza San Lorenzo which was like a HUGE flea market and walked around for a long time and saw the Medici Chapels where a lot of the Medici family (really important family in Florence from the 13th to 17th century - 3 popes!) is buried. We also went to a large indoor market where I had the best sandwich of my entire life, and all it was was salami and cheese!! It was so fresh - they sliced it right in front of us and it was sooo good! We also got super good almonds here! :) We walked around and window shopped and found out that Italian boys are even more aggressive than Spanish boys! (Which I didn't think was possible) For dinner we went to this amazing restaurant called Il Pirata and we paid 7 euro for an all you could eat buffet! There were a lot of Italians there, and it was very authentic and delicious!! (I discovered I really like pesto sauce?) I took pictures of the food so check it out! ;)

Thursday, Feb. 5
We started at Piazza della Signoria which has a copy of David, a bunch of other famous statues, and a really cool fountain. We took a thousand pictures there and then went to the Piazza/Basilica di Santa Croce (I know, I know - all these stinkin piazzas! You have to look at the pictures and then it will make sense!) which is where Michelangelo and Galileo and a bunch of other famous people are buried. There is a statue of Dante outside in the Piazza, but he is buried somewhere else. Next we went to the Uffizi Gallery which holds the world's most important collection of Renaissance art - oh my goodness it was humongous! There is soooo much art there it was ridiculous and I honestly cannot even remember most of it. We got some illegal pics...but for the most part it was just wandering around looking at art for 4 hours. It was really cool, but afterwards I was all arted out dude - I had no idea what most of it even was I just knew it was famous. A lot of the Medici family art collections and works by Michelangelo, Giotto, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael are here so that was cool. Then we went to Ponte Vecchio which I absolutely loved!! It was Florence's first bridge built in 1345 and it is the only bridge that survived from the Medieval days (all others were destroyed in World War II). It is lined with all these cute shops and the view is just amazing. When we went to find lunch, we discovered that everything closed at like 2 or 3 (or really whenever store owners want to close)...but after an hour of looking, we finally ate at Gusta Pizza because they stayed open for us and closed after we ate :) Then we climbed and climbed until we got to Piazzale Michelangelo which had an AMAZING view of the city and a green bronze copy of David ;) and then we got gelato and climbed even higher to the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte which is a Monastery that sits at one of the highest points of Florence (and obviously has a great view)! There was a huge cemetary there and it was a gorgeous day, so we stayed up there for a couple of hours and enjoyed the scenery. Afterwards, we went to see some friends who are studying in Florence in their apartment. (A presidential scholar and one of my good friends from ESA are studying there and it was so nice to see them!) It was cool to see their living conditions and how different they are from ours!! Even though it was fun and interesting, it made me really appreciate living with a family and living in Granada because it was just so different.

Friday, Feb. 6
We went back to San Lorenzo Market and bought pashminas (scarf like things made in italy out of cashmere and silk -sooo nice) and then window shopped some more and ate lunch at Il Pirata (I got Lasagna and it was amazing!!!) Then we took a 4 hour ghetto train ride (The whole side of the train was full of grafitti and it totally should not have taken 4 hours but it was the cheapest one! haha) And we were off to our fourth and final city!