Firenze

I spent this past weekend in Florence with Gabby and Zoe. We met up with Katherine and stayed at my friend Lauren's apartment, which was across the street from the back of the Uffizi.

We left Friday morning, meeting at Trastevere station at 8 am. Our train from the main Rome station (Termini) was supposed to leave at 9:15. However, apparently there are many different entrances to the terminals at Termini. We only saw the signs telling us to go to an underground passage with entrances to the middle of each terminal. Our terminal, though, was locked and the sign on the door was the only sign in the station that didn't have an English translation. This led to us running all over Termini station to find another entrance to the terminal. We missed our train by 3 minutes, the only thing that is ever on time in Italy. However, we were able to change our tickets to 30 minutes later at no charge.

We got into Florence at about 11:15. Katherine met us in the station and walked us to her apartment then to Lauren's. Both their apartment's are huge and very cozy! Florence is a tiny city compared to Rome. Literally everything is a ten minute walk from everything else. Lauren and Katherine live near the city center with all the museums, churches, and high class shopping. Luckily, the weather in Florence this weekend was beautiful. High 50s and sunny everyday.

Katherine and Lauren first took us to the Duomo. We climbed up its 430 stairs first to the inside of the dome near the ceiling frescos, then to the outside of the Dome. It was beautiful besides my irrational fear of heights. 

Outside of the Duomo, It was too large for me to take full scale picture of, so every picture I took is of little parts of it.

Picture of the Duomo's ceiling from the ledge that went around the inside of the Dome, really high above the church

View of Florence from the top of the Duomo

Afterwards we walked a little more around Florence and ended up at a chocolate festival! There were a ton of free samples of Italy's signature creamy chocolate and I think hazelnut sweet. I also bought myself a waffle dipped in chocolate and coconut.

A picture of just a few of the chocolate selections

That evening, we made our way across the Arno river and up a hill that led to an overlook of the city. There we watched the sunset then went into a church to listen to some Gregorian monks chant, we left as they started mass.

Me in front of Florence, you can just make out the Duomo and Ponte Vecchio behind me

On Saturday, Katherine and Lauren took us to the central market, which is a daily morning farmer's market. If I lived in Florence that is where I would shop everyday. In front of the market is the San Lorenzo market, which is where vendors sell leather goods and scarves. Whether the leather is real or not is questionable. Then Gabby Zoe and I alone went to the Academia to see Michelangelo's David and then the Uffizi art museum. No picture are allowed in either building. But I did take a picture of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Uffizi sits at the corner of the Plaza. Also in this plaza is another museum and even some original statues made by famous artists, though I guess I couldn't tell you who these artists are

Palazzo Vecchio

For dinner, we went to a restaurant that supposedly has the best gnocchi in Florence. I agreed. The gnocchi was very simple with a cheese and truffle oil sauce. But they serve large (American size) plates and it is rude in Italy to 1) not clean your plate and 2)take a doggie bag home. I was very disappointed in myself that I could not finish the gnocchi, but it was extremely rich. This restaurant also had the best balsamic I've ever tasted, it was apple flavored and I have to find it!

On Sunday we tried to go leather shopping. We found some pretty nice places, but I could not get myself to splurge for an expensive leather item. I did buy myself a key chain though just as a cheesy souvenir. I left to come back to Rome at around 7:30 PM that day. 

I can't wait to go back to Florence with my parents. There is so much to do there that I did not do. It was probably the most beautiful city I've ever seen. I love Rome, but the ruins mixed into the big city aren't exactly beautiful, they are really cool though. Florence is more of a Medieval/Renaissance city.  My next trip will be the 19th and it is a day trip for wine tasting and lunch in Tuscany with the school. Hopefully I will become very knowledgeable about good wine, because it is hard to be picky about wine here when you kind find a lot of bottles for just 2-3 euro!