FLORENCE

Thursday November 24 I headed off to Florence, Italy! Katie and I make bad decisions and decided to go out the night before. I was smart and made sure to pack everything the night before and be ready to leave. We said we were going to make it an easy night, but apparently everyone knows when you go to Fuzzy Ducks (name of the club), there is no such thing as an easy night.

We even promised that after Berlin travels we were never going out the night before travel day again…Oops.
Katie hadn’t packed that night and had to do it in the morning, which turns out to really cause her some problems once we get to Italy. So after some rushing around and chugging water to try and replace the jager-bombs still in our systems, we were ready to head off to Florence. We were traveling to Florence with Emily and Matt and meeting Sarah there. After some serious struggles on the bus ride and noticeably annoying all the other passengers, let me just say we were ready to get out of there. The plane went smoothly and we arrived into Florence at around 1030PM, and ready to pass out. We dropped our things at our hostel, which was really nice.

This time it was just Emily Matt Katie and Myself in a room with our own bathroom…so no more strangers stealing my bed incidents thank god. Sarah was staying with a friend.

We went out to get a midnight dinner because we were all starving from traveling. We found this little café type place that served pasta of course. Oh My God. It was unbelievable…and it was only going to get better as the trip goes on. We had planned to go out so that we didn’t waste any time but on account of still feeling rough from the night before in addition to the long travel day we decided to head back to the hostel and get a good nights sleep. Much needed.

Friday morning came and we were ready to go! We thought the weather was going to be a lot warmer than England’s and apparently Katie thought “a lot warmer” was like beach weather because the girl brought like 8 tank tops…skirts and one thin jacket. So she kind of struggled to find something to wear as each item she pulled out of her suitcase was spaghetti straps, or sheer.
Luckily though, the weather was warmer. In the mornings it was always still pretty cold and at night the temp would drop drastically. But! During the main hours of the day it was beautiful out, no jacket needed.

Anyways, Friday we woke up and tried to find our way to the duomo.

Matt was the only one the entire trip who actually attempted to look at a map and find the way...well Katie and I were pretty directionally challenged. After walking in circles for about 40 minutes we found it but decided to get pizza first. It was obviously the best pizza ever and it was like thick bakery style. So good. Then we went to the duomo and got a tour. The tour brought us halfway up the duomo which was around 200 stairs up, so tiring. We then realized we weren’t at the top yet. Our guide then told us it was another 300something stairs to the top. UGH. It was a work out. But so worth it because the view was unbelievable, and the weather was beautiful!

We were so relieved to have finally made it to the top! But then we realized we had to now go down the hundreds of stairs. Once we reached the bottom we rewarded ourselves with gelato! I’m obsessed with pistachio now.

Next we went to the museum that had the statue of David! Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures of it, but we did see a replica of it outside.

I wasn't expecting the sculpture to be so huge!

Florence is way different than England. There are hardly any buses and the streets aren’t nearly as crowded. It was quite refreshing actually. The Language barrier wasn’t nearly as hard as Germany, I think because at least we can pick up a few Italian words whereas German is just way different. They had markets set up everyday on the same roads that were kind of like the flea market back home.

I started feeling ill Friday afternoon and wasn’t sure if I was literally still struggling from Wednesday night or if I was coming down with something. We went home and relaxed for a while after walking around all day. We then met up with Sarah for dinner, at ZaZa’s. We all got pasta and wine, of course!! Everyone absolutely loved their meal and cleared their plates in like 5 minutes. I even finished mine before Katie and I’m the world’s slowest eater, whereas Katie could possibly be the fastest, but she “didn’t want it to end” haha.

Saturday

Early start, we were out by 745 and heading to the bus stop because today we were going on an all day tour of Tuscany! The tour brought us to Sienna, to San giamano, to Pisa! Sarah tried to book hers later than ours and it wouldn’t allow her, but she decided to come and try to make it on the bus anyways. The driver told her she would have to wait and see if no one showed up so we were all keeping our fingers crossed for her. Unfortunately, everyone showed up….but then the bus driver and tour guide told her they would squeeze her on!!!! So Sarah got to sit shotgun. Hahaha.

Our first stop was Sienna, where we saw the world’s first and oldest bank. We walked through the streets of Sienna, which were beautiful, and made our way to a cathedral.

This cathedral was my favorite I’ve seen, and I’m seriously not a cathedral person, they all feel the same to me, but this one was so different! It was like zebra inside, it was pretty I loved it.
We had some free time before we had to make it back to the bus so we went into the big open area and sat in the sun for a while.

Our next stop was San giamano, which I still can’t properly say. This was by far my favorite. We went to a farm first for lunch which was also a wine vineyard. We got a tour of the wine cellar,

saw the vineyard

and headed inside for the most delicious meal ever!

First course, bruschetta with a white wine
Second course, pasta Bolognese with a red wine
Third course, cured meats and cheese with a different red wine
Fourth course, biscotti with a dessert wine

They just kept bringing out more food and wine it was out of control! Best part was that they left the bottles of wine for us and we got to pour our own glasses, so basically we got to fill our glasses to the rim….and refill. We were all unbelievably full after as you can imagine. They opened the glass doors where we ate to the patio and the weather was just perfect out. We also had a beautiful view of the vineyards and san giamano. I wish we could have stayed there longer but we were kind of getting rushed back onto the bus so we could fit everything in!

we headed into the town area of San Giamano which was just as fun. What was so cool about San Giamano is that it is still completely surrounded by walls! We had ‘free-time’ here and got to do whatever we wanted for about an hour. We just walked around took in all the sights and did a little shopping!

Pisa! Was next on the list, and that was about an hour away. We all passed out on the bus ride there…probably partly because we were so tired, and partly because of all the wine we just drank.

Obviously the biggest thing people do in Pisa is see the leaning tower.

I thought it was going to be a lot bigger than it actually was, and I didn’t even expect it to be leaning THAT much. So crazy it looked like it would fall over any second! So of course we took all the touristy pictures and by then end of that it was getting dark!

Then we took a little train ride tour through the town of Pisa and that was the end of our tour through Tuscany!

Unfortunately I was feeling even more ill today than yesterday so when we got back to our hostel I laid down and fell right asleep. Then I woke up and we all ate pizza…..and then I went back to sleep! Haha. Our Hostel was SO cold. It was all marble and there was no heat that we could adjust. They gave us 2 sheets each and like a not so warm blanket. Oh and smart little Katie also forgot to pack anything to sleep in, so she had the wide variety again of sheer, or tanktop! I took some medicine and hoped when I woke up I would feel better.

Sunday

Went to the cathedral where Michelangelo and Galileo were buried. It took us forever to get there though because there was a marathon being held through all of Florence. Because of the marathon a lot of the roads were blocked off so we had to find alternative routes….well matt had to find alternative routes and we had to follow. It took us a while but we finally figured it out.
The weather was so nice it was the perfect day to go to the ponte vecchio, so that is where we went next.

Then we got lunch and enjoyed even better gelato at the ponte vecchio! There was ferrero rocher gelato….like those little delicious chocolates

but gelato!!!!

For the rest of the day I went to the markets with Sarah and then we all met up again to get dinner. We went to a nice tented restaurant that had intense heat lamps because like I said, at night the degrees drastically drop. Katie got the best lasagna ever. Everyone elses meal was really good too but the lasagna was crazy.

I wanted spaghetti and meatballs but the guy told me that in Italy they don't do that. That is an American thing and that no one actually eats spaghetti and meatballs together...oh.

Katie and I went on a carousel after because we still want to be five years old

Monday

So sad, our last day in Italy!
Katie and I met up with Liv Whitney who is currently studying in Florence.

I grew up with Liv as my neighbor and Katie and I both went to middle school with her. It was so nice to meet up and catch up…especially in Florence!! She brought us to an American Diner and we got breakfast, Pancakes & omelettes. I hadn’t had pancakes in such a long time. So we had a great time with Liv but she had to get to class and we still had some stuff to do on our last day.
We went to the markets again and did some more shopping and gift buying. Then we met up with our other friend Brady from High Point! Katie roomed with Brady freshman year. She brought us to lunch at this amazing sandwich place which we all devoured and then she brought us for dessert! She introduced us to Florence hot chocolate…which is like basically chocolate syrup. It was super thick and chocolatey. What they do is put gelato in it!

So we all got one of those and it was amazing. It was so cool to meet up with people from home in a different country. By this time we had to get going to the airport, and none of us wanted to leave ☹

The flight home went fine there wasn’t any issues except for when we arrived at Heathrow. We got to the bus station at around midnight and we immediately checked for the next bus back to oxford. Well, with our luck we were NOT pleased to find out that the next bus was not until 1:50. Fantastic. So after wanting to cry and pretend it wasn’t real for 15 minutes we all sat down in silence and waited. It wouldn’t have been so horrible if it was warm but it was absolutely freezing…perfect for my sickeness. But we made it back to our rooms eventually….