Florence 3/9-3/10

Our second stop on our grand tour of Italy was Florence, or as the Italians call it, Firenze. It proved to be an amazing city!

After our four hour train ride to Florence, and our 20 minute walk to our hostel, we finally checked in, dropped our bags off, and went off to explore Florence. We had lunch at a place called Yellow, where we got an amazing pizza and pesto gnocchi. We then went to the Uffizi gallery, which is one of the most famous galleries in Florence, so we had to wait almost an hour to even get in. It was full of renaissance artworks, and although it was a cool gallery and super famous, it wasn’t really my cup of tea. Natalie, Bruna, and I got through the museum pretty quickly, while Sara and Lindsay took a while, so the three of us hung out in the gift shop for a while and got some postcards. Then, we all had to go quickly over to the Accademia, which is the gallery with Michelangelo’s David in it. After waiting in another long line to get in, we finally got to see David. The rest of the gallery wasn’t that impressive, but seeing the real David in person made it worth it. It is so much larger than I had imagined. Because I had seen it in pictures so many times, I just assumed that it was about the same size of most other statues, about lifesize, but upon seeing it, I saw that it was about 15 feet tall! It was very impressive. I didn’t think I could be so awed by a statue, but I definitely was, which is why I guess David is one of the most famous sculptures ever. Also, it is apparently perfectly anatomically correct, which makes it so impressive to see.

After seeing David, we walked to this cute sandwich shop that one of our tourbooks had recommended. It boasted 27 different types of sandwiches, so we decided to try it out. Once we found it, we saw that it was literally a little hole in the wall sandwich stand, but it did in fact have delicious sandwiches. Also, the two guys who were running the shop were extremely nice and talked to us as we ate the sandwiches. It is definitely nice to see friendly faces after getting used to more hostile encounters in Barcelona. We then went to get gelato for desert, which was delicious as always. We were pretty tired at the end of the night, so we decided to go to the local convenience store to get some snacks (and Lindsay had an overfriendly old Italian man talk to her), went back to the hostel, and watched some comedy on Natalie’s laptop. Overall, it was a really fun night in.

The next day, we got up and went to see the Duomo, which is the most famous thing in Florence. It is absolutely breathtaking to see- it is huge, and the outside it covered in white and green marble. The detail is incredible. We took a quick look around inside the Cathedral, and then saw the famous golden doors outside. We didn’t walk up the 450 steps of the Duomo, because the outside is definitely the most impressive part of it.

After the Duomo, we walked over to the marketplace to walk around and have lunch. We had lunch at Trattoria Mario’s, which was delicious, my favorite meal in Italy thus far, and how I had hoped all of Italy would be. It was a tiny little crowded restaurant, that was family run, with delicious food and nice people working there. Most of us ordered the rigatoni, and were not disappointed in the least. After filling up, we went shopping in the marketplace. There were tons of little stands selling everything from Florence souvenirs, to leather goods, fine paper, and clothing. We talked with a couple of the vendors, which was fun, and bought a few souvenirs. As a group we all bought some colorful leather bracelets, which we joke are cheesy friendship bracelets. But really it was a cool idea because we all have awesome bracelets that will remind us of our trip. Ive already had many people complement me on them, asking me where I got them.

After going back to the hostel for a quick break to unload our loot from the marketplace, we walked to Piazza Michelangelo. It was on the other side of the river, and according to most locals we asked, a realllly far walk, ending in scaling a tall hill. But we decided we would tough it out, and also we didn’t want to figure out the busses, so we started our walk up to the piazza. In a relatively short amount of time, we arrived at the bottom of the hill. We walked up quite a bit of stairs, but overall the trek to the piazza wasn’t that bad, and completely worth it once we saw the breathtaking views once we got there. The piazza was overlooking the city, so we got terrific panoramic views. After taking lots of pictures, we sat on the stairs, just talking and looking out over the city for an hour or so.

After Piazza Michelangelo, we returned to the hostel to hang out for a bit, and then Natalie, Lindsay, and I ventured out to get dinner. We went to the little café right around the corner, and got some decent pasta (though it wasn’t amazing). We then walked around the city a bit, stumbled upon a piazza with a carousel, got some gelato, and went home.

Overall, this second day in Florence had been my favorite day so far of the trip because instead of going to museums, we got to relax, have delicious food and gelato, and walk around the city. I felt like going to the marketplace and the beautiful piazza was definitely better than any art museum we had seen thus far.

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