Florence day 1

---

We slept in until around 9:30am, then headed out by 10:15 to go to the internet place. We needed to change our hostel in Rome and spent about an hour trying to find the perfect one...we eventually did and quickly booked it before there was no availability (more on that when we get to Rome).

Once we took care of business, we could finally head off to see the sites. We started out with the duomo (duomo just means dome, and pretty much every city has one) but decided not to pay the extra fee for climbing to the top. We were starting to run low on cash at this point, and we were also sick of stairs. Next to the duomo was the baptistry, which we kind of got duped into paying for but it was still pretty nice anyways. After we had had enough of church stuff, we walked around the city and passed by the Uffizi, one of Florence's main art galleries. We then made our way down to the river and found the Ponte Vecchio, which is a famous bridge that survived the Nazi invasion. On our way there, we found an awesome looking gelato place that we wanted to go back to, but we had to get lunch first. We settled for paninis at a small cafe with a really cute old waiter...we couldn't resist. We quickly scarfed down our lunch so we could get gelato! Panna cotta is oh so delicious!

We found ourselves fat and full yet again so it was time to take a nap. We took our gelato and walked over to the Palace Pitti and camped out on the "gravel beach" in front of the palace. I ended up falling right asleep but woke up later with my back hurting like hell. At this point we headed back to the city center to revisit the shops and pick up some items that we had forgotten yesterday. Today we were shopping with a budget and with a purpose.

We came back to the hotel around 5:00 and took another nap (a real one this time, in a nice comfy bed). We then headed out for dinner and tried to find a nice club to go to. Unfortunately, things don't start hopping until around midnight, and it was waaay past my bedtime. We ended up going to some place called Fish Pub because they offered us free drinks but it was a bust. I was so shocked to see little high school teeny boppers getting jiggy with it and doing shots. I couldn't stand being at the pub for very long we finished our drinks and then left.

---