A weekend in Florence!



Florence Cathedral



If you think Rome is a place to shop, wait till you see Florence, in the Tuscany region or Italy. Shops and vendors are everywhere! Shopping and museum visits were bascially the entirety of the weekend. it is afterall the popular manufacturing city of leather. Apparently, many "famous people" order their apparel from Florence. We saw a leather coat in a shop window costing 2000 euros! Yikes!!

We arrived by train and immediately checked into our 4 star hotel, called the Hotel California, so needless to say, we were all singing "Hotel California" for the rest of the day. As soon as we dropped out bags off we had to go chase after Paolo (art history professor) at the Bargello museum. Many of Michelangelo's first sculptures were in this museum as well as some of Leanoardo Da Vinci's paintings. After keeping up with Paolo and his shape up tennis shoes for clsoe to 2 hours, we had a lunch break. We were looking for something cheap (of course). Pizza anyone?! We found a restaurant with 5 euro pizzas--whole pizzas! That's right! And what's even more classy, we found a quiet alley way, sat in the street and ate our whole pizzas. Just picture 5 of us, all with our pizzas just chowin' and chillin' in the alley way.



my whole pizza!





In the alley way



One thing is for sure, we were all looking forward to the free multi course dinner at the hotel that night--4 courses with this one: bread, pasta, pork and gravy, veggies and ice cream for dessert! To go along with such a delicious meal was an intense conversation with my roomates Kayla, Jacquie and Mikala where we basically planned out our entire futures :)

It was a beautiful night in Florence so what better way to end it than with drinks on the hotel terrace with most of our group? Couldn't get much better!

Next day was museum day--we had 2 to get to today and for the first, all I will say is Michelangelo's David. I was in complete awe at the sight of this handsome statue. I mean jaw-to-the-floor type of awe. You'd round the corner at the Accademia museum and you think of angels singing "alleluia" one you saw this statue. I think I stood in front of David for close to an hour. I could go on and on explaining the whole sight of David, but for your sake I won't. Long story short: I was Michelangelo's famous David, and it was amazing!



Hat shopping!



Before our next museum visit with Paolo, we had some free time to wander and shop the streets of Florence. We admired all the leather and scarves that we passed and I had to try really hard to not buy too many scarves. ( I think most of the girls have actually developed a bit of a scarf fettish here) but I caved and bought another anyways, after some bargaining of course! Pretty sure every girl went back with at least one scarf. So we did our fair share to help the economy

Off to see more artwork. This time taking notes and running with Paolo now in his fedora hat at the Uffizi musuem. I was exhausted by then so staying focused was a bit of a challenge. The main thing I remember from the museum is that all of Botecelli's artwork is from 1480...

By the end I was museum-ed out. We went out for dinner that night with Paolo who desperately wanted his Florentine steak, which is supposedly deliciously famous, but I wouldn't know since I didn't get that.

Last but not least was the Medici Chapels followed by even more shopping and eventually a train ride home to Rome. Let's sum up Florence: shopping, David, shopping, museums and food! :)