Firenze!

So, today we went to Firenze (also know as Florence, by Americans). And it was just as pretty as I remember but it was an incredibly long, hot day full of expensive things. It actually wasn't as exciting as many of our days in Rome have been. But it was still fun.

The morning started off bright and early, meeting at 6:30 to bus it to the train station so we could catch the 7:45 am train. We took one of the fast trains that would get us to Florence in only an hour and a half. We planned on getting there around 9:15 and taking the 9:10 train back, giving us a solid 12 hours to spend there.

The train itself was very nice and pretty comfortable, although I don't remember most of the train ride because I went to sleep almost as soon as we started to move. Actually, almost all of us (there were 14 of us on that train, I think) slept most of the way there.

Once we arrived, we went straight to the Galleria dell'Academia to see the David. We weren't originally planning on it, but you kind of have to see the David if you're in Florence. There weren't too many people in line (it was only 9:30) so we figured it we'd be in and out and would have plenty of time to shop before it got super hot.

We figured wrong. We waited nearly an hour and a half in the already hot morning along the shadeless wall of the Galleria to just get in to the building. Once we got in though, the David was as cool as it was before and I even snapped an illegal picture before the guards noticed! But by the time we had all seen the David and breezed by everything else in the museum, it was definitely lunch time. We had gotten a few recommendations of where to go from our professor so we traipsed off to find one of them.

Believe it or not, I am actually quite a good navigator and didn't manage to get us lost on the way to the restaurant or any other time during the day! We went to a pretty standard restaurant for lunch, most of us getting pizza or pasta. I thought about it though, and since we usually cook dinner and just grab a cheap sandwich or something for lunch, and realized I've only ordered pasta one since I've been here! So I got pasta for lunch and it was delicious.

The group split up after lunch and most of the girls heading right to the shopping streets. I not only succeeded in getting a few souvenirs but also got a beautiful purple purse! I went into the leather store not planning on getting anything and ending up spending entirely too much money. But my new bag is beautiful and it's purple! So it was a good purchase, I think. I also got a matching wallet of the same purple leather. It was successful. And, the owner of the leather shop knew our professor, Lisa, so he gave us all really good discounts! Lisa knows everyone. I feel like we should just start name-dropping her wherever we go!

But, after the leather shop, we wandered around the market area through stalls of scarves and leather. That seems to be basically all they sell in Florence, other than David memorabilia.

After we had bought quite a bit and were laden down with heavy bags, it was hot. Very hot. We went to some fancy cathedrals and churches and across the Ponte Vecchio but everything in Florence is expensive to do! So we didn't want to pay to get into a bunch of random museums that we'd never heard of (I mean, just the David is 10 euros so I really didn't want to keep dropping that much money to see random things). We ended up wandering around for a long time until we got super thirsty, after which we decided to find a super market or something to get water before we died of dehydration. Florence doesn't have nice aqueduct-fed fountains like Rome does. The supermarket we found was almost sold out of water (everyone else seemed to have the same idea as us) and we grabbed this normal looking bottle from the shelves. It was called "gassoso" or something so we figured it'd be carbonated like a lot of the water here but whatever. We opened it, however, and it wasn't just carbonated, but was this sugary lime flavor. It was kind of like Sprite. Nowhere on the bottle did it say anything about flavoring--no picture of a lime or anything--so I just really don't understand this Italian marketing system. Oh well.

We ended up still dehydrated and met up with the rest of our group to watch the Argentina-Germany game. Not that exciting, but we were hot, tired, and thirsty and there's really not that much to do in Florence. So we watched the huge 4-0 Germany upset and then left to go find a restaurant for dinner.

Trying to find one, we actually found out THERE ARE NO RESTAURANTS IN FLORENCE. We literally wandered blocks without seeing any. We decided to just walk back towards the train station and see what we could find. We eventually found one and our group of 10 sat down to eat what turned out to be very mediocre food.

Seriously, at this point, we were just tired and wanted to go home. But we still had a couple hours before our 9:10 train. So, we went to the supermarket to buy some things people needed and somehow we ended up purchasing the always classy boxed wine. It was store-brand and had a twist off top so really was our only choice if we were going to drink it on the train.

We just headed to the train station after that. Even though we were more than an hour early, we just wanted to go home! We were able to get on an earlier train (8:40 instead of 9:10) and that made us all a little happier. And, busting out the boxed wine on the train made us even happier, if not a little sleepy. The white wine actually ended up being decent so it was a nice surprise. The red, not so much, but oh well. Once the train pulled into Rome, we found our bus, walked home, and I will go straight to bed very soon.

Overall, Florence was okay. I'm glad we went--I got a lot of shopping accomplished, but we could have even spent less time there than we did. 12 hours was actually a bit much. Anyways, sleep is calling to me, so I will blog again later!