Greetings from Florence!
I realize that, once again, I have been neglecting my blog. Sorry! We've been in Italy since Sunday. We flew into Milan where we wandering around in the rain having failed to book a hostel or form any sort of plan whatsoever. We are awful backpackers. Eventually we found a jank-but-pretending-to-be-nice hotel that gave us a room for 35 euro each. Not ideal but it was nice to have space to ourselves!
We tried to hang out in Milan the next day but after a bad start in which it took us ages to find food and water, we ended up snapping a few quick pictures of the Duomo and then hopping a train to Florence. Florence is lovely. We've been taking it pretty easy, mostly eating and walking around. We did go on a free tour that covered a lot of the architecture from the Medici area. I'll post some pictures later.
Near our hostel, there is a big market that sells tons of leather goods along with the usual fake jewelry and souvenirs. After an agonizing search for the best price with decent quality, Michelle and I both caved to our craving for leather duffelbags. Pricey but we got a pretty good deal and, as I keep telling myself, they'll be great as carry-on and weekend bags even when get back. I also picked up a new small, cross body purse yesterday (when I discovered that mine was breaking) as well as a couple of gifts. Not bad for three days although I should probably cool it on the shopping for a bit!
Wednesday we met up with Amy and Dan, the Aussie couple we met in Barcelona, and went to a festival for St. Lorenzo, who is an important saint in the area where we are staying. It was good to catch up with Amy and Dan and the festival was fun. Along with some live music, it included free watermelon, yogurt, and pasta. The pasta had meat in it so Michelle, being a proper vegetarian, gave hers away. After 12 seconds of deliberation I decided that if I picked around the big pieces, the little ones that stuck to the noodles didn't count. To solidify my title as worst vegetarian in the world, I ordered Spaghetti Carbonara on Thursday which turned out to be pasta with ham or something instead of tomato like I thought. There wasn't much I could do so I figured, as my mo (or someone) says, might as well get hung for the the sheep as the lamb (or something) and I ate it (I did avoid the big bits of meat again). So that was a failure.
Last night we hit up an American bar with all of the people who were staying in our dorm. It was a little too club-y with a bunch of creeps but a bunch of us staked out the hall between the two rooms of the bar and spent basically the entire night dancing around and cheering for all the people who came through the hall. People either thought it was great and danced with us or looked terrified. One Australian girl liked us so much she treated us to a long speech about how Canadians are much better than Americans. It was really awkward. I think she thought we were all Canadian but when she tried to introduce a friend to "the Canadians" I told her I was American. That was even more awkward.
We leave for Perugia tomorrow. Florence has been really fun and I can't wait to check out a smaller, less touristy town! Ciao!
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