Firenze (fear-N-zay)

Hello follewers and family members...

Alyssia and I have been busy gallavanting (yes, there is no other word to describe what we have been doing) through Florence, Italy. Obviously, we have Americanized this word, which made me sad. So here, Florence is Firenze which I prefer. Anyways, we are staying in the hostel 7 Santi which is actually a converted convent attached to a church. This makes for an interesting stay, since we hear the church bells often. However, this place has better showers than my house, so I have no complaints.

An overview of what we have been doing...

Day 0
We arrived in Florence at night and after a little bit of trouble found our hostel, which also has a restaurant. Our dear waiter friend brought us out a table since all the other ones were taken my a large party. We have bow tie pasta and tiramisu and it was delicious. After one of the best hot showers, we "hit the hay" to prepare for our next day.

Day 1
Now while I love our hostel, it is certainly not in the center of Firenze for USD17 per night. It's about an hour walk to the duomo, maybe more because Alyssia and I feel the need to stop into everything market on the planet. On this day it happened to be an open market with lots of cheap clothing and some second hand stuff. Finally though, with our trusty map we made it to the Duomo. The sheer size of this church and basilicca is so overwhelming you cannot fit it in your camera lens. You cannot even take in the whole scene while you are standing in front of it. It's beautifully decorated on the outside and many of the churches in the area have the green and white striping exterior. Next, we reopened the map to find the infamous leather markets. The smell and sheer amount of leather was amazing. We wandered through and endning up buying scarves and a gift for my Daddio. You literally could spend days and dollars there!

Next we headed over to the Piazza del Signoria. This is the piazza right outside the Uffizi museum. It is filled with statues that have been found all over Italy. We just sat there and took in the views around the piazza and rested our feet. This is also right by the main river that cuts around the outside of Florence. We got a great view of the Ponte Vecchio, which is a famous bridge that has little apartments attached to the outside. Of course, I can't post pictures yet! But they will come soon.

That night, we sat down for dinner and had spaghetti bella napoli and a ricotta and mozzarella calzone. It was all so delicious as is everything here. However, one of the best drinks so far were the mojitos we got at a nearby bar. Fresh mint and freshly squeezed limes... So delicious! A bunch of men were in there watching a soccer game and yelling, so it felt like true Italy.

Day 2
We decided to take one of our day trips on Sunday and boarded the SITA bus to Siena around noon. Siena is like a mini, much less modern Florence. We learned that it has 17 original families, each with their own crest and flag. Celebrations and festivals are frequent and on that day they were celebrating juliet's birthday. Yes, Juliet from Romeo & Juliet. Men in brightly colored tights were waving flags and drumming and it was a great scene. The piazza there is really impressive and slopes down into the center. Apparently there is huge horse race called the Palio held there every year, which I imagine would be interesting to watch. The duomo there is quite beautiful as well and I took a peak inside to see how gaudy it was, maybe the most thus far. While we did not see many Siena people, I think they must be very skinny as the whole town is hills!

On the bus ride back to Firenze, we met a lovely couple from New York who we talked to most of the bus ride back. We warned them that we had really only talked to each other in the past week and a half, and that's why we were so chatty!

That night on the way back from the train station, we stopped at a little trattoria for dinner. I had spaghetti with vongole, or clams and it was delicious. It blew away the dishes I had had on Cape Cod! We also saw a boy from AU at the place which was very strange. Alyssia told me this would happen sooner or later.

Day 3
Back on my last day at 586, I waited on two couples from Ohio. We got to talking about their trip to Cape Cod and my impendingg adventure to Europe came up. Well don't you know that one of the couples and their son were headed to Rome and Florence for two weeks during september. So I gave them my email address assuming they would probably forget about it. The I got an email from them asking to meet up for lunch! I figured family from them Midwest can't be too bad! So we met them for lunch and I had raviolis. They were super nice and treated up to lunch and gelato. We ended up spending the rest fo the afternoon together and went to the markets again and inside the Duomo. Nick (the dad) and Nicholas and I climbed up 436 steps to the top of the tower to get a full view of the whole city. It was a great view even though it was cloudy out. A lot of the Europeans were huffing and puffing, too many chocolate treats for breakfast I would assume. Also, 60% of our countries would not have fit in these winding staircases (mom, you would not have liked it!)

That night after wandering through the rain to find our hostel, we realized we were next to a supermarket. So we got a baguette, some olives, mozzarella cheese, salami and a bottle of wine, all for 12 euros. We ate our little feast and then started on the wine. We had some good laughs with the other person sharing our room, a boy from Las Vegas. I drank about 3/4 of the bottles, to say I had the giggles is an understatement.

Day 4
Today we headed off to Greve, which is a little country town that is also accessible by the SITA bus. The view from the bus were pretty breathtaking as you wind up and down the mountainside. The town is super small and we stopped in the center for a gelato. Then we basically hiked up this mountain to get better views. We could see the whole countryside and some vineyards which as pretty cool. I sang the sound of music as our theme song / background music.

Later that day we waited 1 hr and 10 minutes to get into the Uffizi which was less than impressive. Yes of course there was some great art and a decent amount of stuff I recognized, but overall I though there would be more in the place for ten euros and sort of wished we went to see the David instead. Still a good show though and I recommend reserving the tickets in advance.

So that was Florence! I already want to come back!
Besides my twenty five bug bites and my breakout on my forehead, I would say the trip is going quite well!

Off to Venice!
XO