Italia!!! Oh what a wonderful country - the food, the wine, the men... did I mention the food?! We decided to start our trip in Italy in the region of Tuscany. We stayed in an old convent in Florence, which was very interesting and fun - the shower was awesome, the bed was ok and the food in the restaurant was good and cheap! We took the free tour and got shown around the city, which was good. We found where Leonardo da Vinci's house... isn't. They tore it down after a flood, I think, when they were rebuilding the city. We also got to see some awesome churches (for real, the 3rd biggest is in Florence and it is INCREDIBLE). We did not see the statue of David, but we sure saw a lot of pictures of it... including on boxer shorts. We went to the piazza de Michelangelo which had a reproduction of the David statue, but done in bronze and from that piazza we had a fantastic view of all of Florence. So we have some great pictures of Florence for you... eventually :).
The train trip to Florence was beautiful, it followed the Mediterranean Sea until it had to go up into the mountains, which is also when the sun went down, so we didn't see much of the countryside on the way in. We walked around the old part of the city and along the river, had some gelato (it was actually invented there) at a very famous gelateria. No, I don't remember the name, but it was good stuff! We found out that at some places, they have the pasta and stuff out in front of you, you decide what you want to eat and then they put it all on a plate and microwave it to warm it up. We hadn't really seen that before. It was funny when we went to this place because we asked the guy what was the best and he said "everything." Apparently he makes it all fresh in the morning. Good stuff. When someone asked the guide where the best place to eat was, he said "my house." So I get the feeling that if you want really awesome Italian food, make friends with an Italian and have them cook for you. The stuff in the restaurants is good, don't get me wrong, but I have the feeling if an Italian has the choice to cook or go out to eat, they'd probably choose to cook.
The weather was good - a mix of rain, sunshine and only really cold in the shade. I actually found a perfume that I like - which is good because it's useful when backpacking. Trust me on this one. The Italians have been really nice, and the guys are good for a girl's ego. The old part of Florence isn't really all that big and most of the churches in Italy have been free to go into. The one that wasn't has a bunch of famous people buried in it... and I think it's the same one with the actual statue of David. It has a big blue star of David on the front of it, which apparently caused some problems when it was first built (the architect was Jewish). They left it up because they had to admit that Jesus was Jewish, but the architect apparently is not buried in the church... he's buried half in and half out of the church. And it's these stories that make travel so interesting. The plaza that the tour started from was where the Romans used to have chariot races, and they left the shape of the plaza the same as it was... so standing there imagining Romans racing their chariots while taking pictures of the church with your digital camera is kind cool. I love how over 2000 years of history is everywhere around here, not only in Italy but in all of Europe. Seeing the scope of the Roman empire and actually being where so much has happened is truly mind-boggling when you think that American history only really started 200-300 years ago. (Well, not really because obviously people were here, but you know what I mean!) It was a little taste of awesome before we went on to Rome... which was like a friggin' buffet of awesome!
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