florence: day one

After an early morning train to Florence, we arrived at our home for the next three days, Ostello Archi Rossi. Our room was not available so we dropped off our bags and went exploring. Unfortunately for Nick and Chip, exploring led Anne and Corinne to find the many markets of Florence. Apparently Florence is known for their silver, gold, and leather. Leather bags were everywhere and the girls vowed to buy bags before they left. We also wanted to find Nick some leather “mandals” (men’s fashion sandals that we saw on every Italian man) but Nick was not as enthusiastic as we were.

When our room was ready we returned to the hostel to put our things away. Luckily we got a room with only four beds and a private bathroom. Unfortunately, the beds were bunk beds and there was no air conditioning. Most of our stops up to this point had been fairly comfortable weather wise but Florence was HOT!! The one little fan we had was not going to do much, especially for Chip and Corinne who got stuck with the top bunks. After putting our things away, we set out to find some sites we wanted to visit. We walked over the Ponte Vecchio, Florence’s famous covered bridge and tried to get into the Boboli Gardens outside the Pitti Palace but there was a steep fee for that we had not counted on. We continued our journey to head up to the Piazzale Michaelangelo. We were not aware it would be another hike rivaling Switzerland! We made it to the top to see amazing views of Florence and beyond. We were even treated to a greener and smaller version of David (a tease for the next day).

On our walk back, we stumbled across a restaurant where we had an amazing Italian pasta dinner. A few things got lost in translation here, so we ended up with four appetizers rather than the one we ordered to split but it did not matter because everything was so delicious. We made it back to our hostel and suffered through a very hot night, while still looking forward to the days to come.

~Corinne & Nick