Firenze

Leslie and I went to Italy last Thursday, and the boat ride over to Livorno was simply terrifying. The seas were extremely choppy, and people were falling over everywhere as if they had too much to drink because the boat was rocking so much! We survived the 4-hour-ride-turned-5-hours-because-of-bad-weather, and made it to Livorno, where we had lunch and then got a train to Florence.

We arrived in Florence at night, dropped our bags off at our hostel, and then explored the marketplace. They have a huuuge market where they sell amazing leather goods, jewelry, clothes, accessories, touristy trinkets, basically everything. It was so awesome walking around at night. I also sort of may have bought an amazing leather jacket. I knew I would buy something in leather since that's what Florence is known for, but I was thinking just a keychain or a wallet or belt or something. Nope. Got a jacket. Ha.

We sort of stumbled across the Duomo...which...is...the MOST beautiful building I have ever seen in my entire life. I was just dumbfounded when we laid eyes on it. The exterior is so intricate and it's so HUGE, I have no idea how anyone built that church. I think my mouth was hanging open for over 15 minutes, I couldn't believe it. It seriously puts Notre Dame in Paris to shame. Notre Dame looks like absolute CRAP compared to the Duomo in Florence. It was insane. We went inside the next day, and it was actually kind of a let down...I guess I was expecting it to be just as ornate inside, which it wasn't, although I can't say it was ugly in there. They just concentrated most of their resources on the outside. Not to mention that the entire thing took hundreds of years to build, so I can't blame them.

We got lectured by our hostel desk personnel since we were only staying in Florence for one night. I'm not kidding when I use the word "lectured" either...he made us sit down and listen to a history lesson, plus he was just generally disgusted by the fact that we were leaving after only 24 hours, and for Siena no less. (Apparently Siena is the rival town to Florence...it would have been extremely helpful to have known this beforehand.)

We spent a few hours in the Uffizi the next morning, walked around a lot more in the markets, explored the old bridge in town, visited a lot of piazzas, saw the statue of David, etc etc etc. We did so much in the time that we had there! The statue of David was also AMAZING!! It was way bigger than I thought it would be, and I was shocked at how extremely perfect it was. People aren't kidding when they say it's the most beautiful and perfect statue in the world. It really is. There is a VEIN in David's arm/hand that is the most perfect thing I have ever seen. It was anything BUT a let down! We still had to pay 10 euros to see that...but that's okay, it was worth it in my opinion.

We ate tons of gelato, even though we got ripped off by someone who sold us one for 7 euros each...but I loved Florence. Leslie and I were having massive communication issues, though, since we were so used to speaking French all the time. People in Italy speak way more English than they do French, but for some reason whenever we'd get up to a counter we were paralyzed and couldn't get anything out! Or, if we started in English, we'd switch to French by accident the next time we spoke...people were generally confused around us and didn't know where the hell we were from. The guy at the hostel said "oh, you're from the United States?" to which Leslie responded "oui!" All in all, though, amazing!