Getting to know Firenze

Jan 27, 2009


Today we had to be up at 8 for breakfast because at 9:30 we had a city tour. Breakfast consisted of pastries with Nutella, fruit and very weird scrambled eggs (bright orange??) The tour I was in turned out to be all friends from the night before so we got to know eachother a little better. The tour was of all of the most famous historical places in Florence. We saw the Ponte Vecchio, Piazza della Repubblica, designer shops, Santa Croce Church, Santa Spirita Church, San Lorenzo Church, Il Duomo, the Boboli Gardens and the Uffizi Museum. We ended around noon and so a group of us went to a cafe for lunch at a very touristy cafe in Piazza della Repubblica. Our server was a very animated, old Italian man. I got Ribollita, which is a traditional Tuscan soup. It was 12 Euro (aka too much!) After lunch we headed back to the hotel to rest and get ready for dinner. I took a nice, long HOT shower which I kind of felt refreshed me from my jet lag. At 6 we headed to dinner at the "best pizza place in Florence." Little did we know our first stop was at Piazzale Michelangelo which overlooks the entire city. We boarded a city bus and I'm not exxagerating, at least 80 people were crammed on there. We couldn't breathe and we kept all falling into eachother because the bus driver drove like a maniac. Anyway the view was amazing but the ride was not. After we stopped on the hill we drove to the pizza place. I was nearly carsick by the time we got there. We sat down at tables and there was bread for us. Then shortly after they brought us cheese pizza. It had fresh mozzarella on it. It was good but not great. We had a tiramisu thing for dessert (looking back I'm pretty sure it was pannacotta, actually.) Then we took the bus back to the hotel. I got ready with my roommate Allie to go out. We met up with these girls Cat & Tiana and their friends from home Dimitri, Jeff and Mike who are all fun. The guys have met a few promoters here, and they took us to a club called Twice. It's fairly small. I drank champagne and Redbull all night and the bartender (Gianmarco) gave us these banana flavored shots (Junebugs!) Anyway we didn't get home til 4am, which seems so late at home but everyone says that's normal here. Either way it was fun!