Easter Break 2010- Florence

The trip from Rome to Florence was eventful. We got to the train station with 3 minutes to spare before our train left, the only problem was that we couldn’t find it, so we ran… and running with a 65L backpack is not fun. Not fun at all. We missed our train and got on another one that left 30 minutes later, so it really wasn’t that big of a deal. Oh yes, let me tell you why we missed the train. There was free breakfast at our hostel, and in an effort to save money on food the rest of the day, we stuffed our faces and threw food into bags to take with us. Hoarding free breakfast was a skill that we perfected by the end of the trip, but that is another story. Anyway, back to the traveling. We went from Rome to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower, which I thought was a little disappointing. It was exactly like the pictures look. The weather was rainy and cold on the day we went, and so all we did was walk to the tower and then turn around and walk back to the train station. The pictures we took were very unimpressive too; sorry Mom, I didn’t take any pushing it over pictures. Then we got on another train to Florence and were there by dinnertime. But we didn’t have to buy dinner because we still had free breakfast food left over, yum.

Checking into our hotel was a little scary because somehow our reservation was lost, and there weren’t any 3-person rooms anywhere because it was Easter Sunday. Did I mention the hotel clerk didn’t speak English? Well she didn’t, but she was so sweet, and eventually put us in a 2-person room for a discounted price (we just squeezed on the bed).

My favorite thing that we saw in Florence was the Dome of the Florence Cathedral. It is a double dome, and it was a 1 hour wait in line and over 500 stairs to the top. The view was gorgeous, you could see for miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers). I also saw The David while in Florence. It was surprisingly larger than I thought it was. It was absolutely amazing; you could see the veins in his arms! I got yelled at for taking a picture of him so you better appreciate it!

It is hard to say what was my favorite place in Italy, because they were all so different. I got to see so much in Rome, but I loved the laid-back schedule and atmosphere in Florence. Florence was our last Italian city, or so we thought, so we got our fill of Pasta and gelato, and headed to Nice!