Fun in Florence

Beautiful view of Florence from the gardens

The palace and the gardens

Pisa...solo shots are really awkward...I never know what to do with my hands and I didn't want to pretend I was holding up the tower like the other people around me

The Duomo

Ponte Veccio...those are all gold shops...really pretty jewlery

We left around 10am from Venice and the train took about 3 hours again to Florence. I have a friend, Felicity, studying in Florence so she met me and Macon at the train station and she let us stay at her apartment which was so fun. She rooms with 5 other girls and their apartment is so big. We cooked dinner and drank wine and it was very relaxing and nice not to have to spend money. She introduced me and macon to an amazing pizza restaraunt called Rossapamadora...it wasnt as good as Venice but still awesome. I forgot to say that while I was in Venice I ran into one of my other really good friends Sarah Beth in Venice and a guy who we had met in Dublin who goes to school in New York(The world is SOOO SMALL)...Anyway, back to Florence. The first day we went to the Duomo which is a huge church right in the center of Florence (which by the way has a horrible street plan...nothing makes since...thank goodness for maps) The Duomo has the best view of the city if you climb the 463 stairs to the top which we did. It was beautiful...unfortunately I forgot my camera so only Macon has pictures of it. That night Felicity made us spaghetti and we went out to a discotecha called YAB...which stands for Young and Beautiful...it was a lot of fun. The next day Felicity took me and Macon on her personal tour of Florence to the leather market, gold streets, ponte Veccio(sp?,...its a cool bridge)...and taught us a bunch of history about the Medici family (I realized I really know nothing about Italy's history)...then Macon and I decided to go to Pisa because its only an hour away from Florence by train. The Tower was leaning obviously and its very tall!!! The town of Pisa was tiny but fun to walk around because its very medieval. When we got back into Florence we walked around and got gelato with Felicity and all her roommates. The next and final day we had in Florence Macon and I walked to the palace and the gardens and just spent the day there which was nice and beautiful. We had such nice weather. We also walked around the open air markets. We had a really early train at 6am to Rome so we didn't want to go out or anything. We went to this awesome place for dinner though called Il Pirata...basically there are a lot of little places around Florence where you can go during the day and get fresh pastas, veggies, meats, basically anything To Go but at night they cant save all the leftover food so they put everything left over out for a buffet. You pay 7euros and can eat all you want. There were probably five different dishes of pasta, veggies, and meats and we helped ourselves. It was awesome! Then we left early the next morning for Rome.