Onto Florence and the Italian Countryside

**EDIT. Thanks to Anonymous for naming all the landmarks that I never bothered to learn the names of. I have now added the names to this post.**

December 29 – We got all our bags packed up and got on the bus to go to Florence. So many people were hung over from the open bar. I think a few were even still drunk. When Angie went around handing out barf bags, tons of people took one. I was sure someone would spew and set off a chain reaction.

We got to San Gimignano without any troubles or spewing to stop for lunch. It was incredibly beautiful. I ended up wandering off on my own to take in the view, and walked along the edge of the city. By the time I got to the end of the trail, I had found some people, so I decided to just stick with them. I had some pizza for lunch, and we looked around and shopped a bit, and I made sure to get some gelato before we got back on the bus.

Looking through the old city towards the view.

The view!

Walking around the outside of the town.

Walking through town.

We got our rooms for Florence assigned while we were on the bus, and I found out that my roommate got switched from Bianca to a girl that had just arrived late the night before. We got to Florence and had some free time before our included dinner, so I had a nap.

The dinner was at a weird restaurant with bizarre murals on the walls. Everything was very gaudily coloured and over-the-top. The dinner wasn’t very good either. We had mediocre garlic bread, boring spaghetti with tiny chunks of meat and watery sauce, salad that was essentially pure lettuce, and not a good dessert.

After the dinner we went to a bar for karaoke. It was pretty fun. People were ordering huge towers of booze with firecrackers on top, so that was pretty neat to see. Unfortunately, some of the songs didn’t have lyrics, so that made things a little hard. We did convince Angie to get up and sing though. As per usual, there was only one legitimately good singer the whole time I was there, and she wasn’t from our group. I left early because I wanted to be able to get on our bus for free, and I was pretty tired anyway.

The next day we had an early wake-up. I got up, had breakfast and got ready to go, and then we headed up the hill to get a good view of Florence and take a group photo. That was where we saw the first replica of David.

View of Florence from up on the hill (it wasn't the nicest day).

Then we went to a leather factory downtown so we could learn how they make Florence leather boxes (for jewelry or other things) with layers and layers of leather. They also told us how to spot fake leather, and then we got free time to look around their shop. They had tons of beautiful things, including Florence puzzle rings, but even with the Contiki discount they were offering us, I couldn’t find anything I liked at a price I was willing to pay.

Santa Croce on our way to the leather factory. Even though there's a Star of David, this is a church, not a synagogue.

After going through the shop, there was still a little time before we had to meet our local guide for our walking tour, so Bianca and I decided to go into the Chanel store to stay warm and dry off a bit from the rain. There were tons of sales clerks in there (even one to open the door), and we did feel a little like we were being jerks just for wasting their time, so we didn’t stay long.

Once our tour guide got to the meeting spot, he walked us around for a while. He wasn’t quite as good as our first local guide, and sometimes he was a bit hard to hear, but he was pretty good, and he did point out that the David’s hands are too big for his body, which I hadn’t noticed before (2nd David replica of the day).

This replica is much better than the one up on the hill.

There were some chains where people had attached all kinds of locks.

Ponte Vecchio - cool bridge.

We ended the tour at a big, fancy church (the Duomo), so I looked around that a bit because we had some free time. Then I decided to go find some food with a couple other people. We found a tiny little Mom & Pop café near the church run by an older couple who hardly spoke any English. They were adorable and kept us well fed, giving up some free bread and little meat/cheese (/I’m not exactly sure) filled pastries as appetizers. We had a delicious little lunch (I had gnocchi), and the prices were good too.

Duomo - church.

Inside of the church. Surprisingly simple in comparison to the outside, no?

After lunch, we headed towards the Accademia to meet Angie and get our tickets. The museum itself was a bit of a let down. It was cool to see David, but there wasn’t much else there, and the stuff that was there was not stuff I found particularly interesting. They had a section about musical instruments (which was not nearly as good as the Sibelius museum), some old artwork, and a room full of statues (which wasn’t explained very well). Since I had already seen 2 replicas of David that day, it wasn’t even all that exciting to see him, but it was neat to get the full effect of him being displayed in such a grand room.

I really blitzed through L’Accademia, so I ended up leaving with a different group of people than I came with. We wandered for a bit before we decided to go find some gelato (supposedly “the best in Florence”). We found it (with some help from Angie after we ran into her), and although it was really good, the serving was entirely too small for my tastes!

After we met up with the rest of the group, we got on the bus and went back to the hotel. We had a bit of free time to get ready for dinner, and then we were off into the Tuscan countryside for our fancy Florence dinner.

The dinner was pretty good. We got to eat a big ol’ roast pig. They even put a sparkler on it as they brought it out. The best part of the meal was the table I was at though. Everyone was having a great time. We were the only table that danced to the YMCA, and we danced to a bunch of other songs too. We were sitting right next to the old man that was DJing, and he had a great time finding things like The Macarena for us to dance to. We even did the electric slide when the South Africans at my table were trying to teach it to us.

Straight from dinner we headed off to the disco. We all had cards for 1 free drink (I gave mine away). Everyone had a great time dancing everywhere (stages included). I caught a cab home when a bunch of other people decided they were ready to go, and I spontaneously got a nosebleed when we got back to the hotel, so I just waited outside for it to stop (and my roommate to come home with the key).