e learned that the great thing about traveling in Europe is that things are fairly cheap and you can book them pretty much whenever you feel like going!Friday morning we left early and took an hour and a half train ride through the beautiful mountains (maybe they were hills, I’m not sure, they were big though, because my ears kept popping). The whole time we were on the train the view kept getting more beautiful, it was so nice to be outside of the city for a while and see green trees! Haha
Once we got to Florence we got on a bus and navigated our way to the hostel the other 4 girls were going to be staying at while I stayed with my friend Gina. We went to the exact address only to find a picture frame store! The hostel they had booked (luckily they didn’t pay yet) no longer existed!! To make a long story short, they called a friend and found
somewhere to stay, but for a little bit we were felt a little worried.
Once we got our sleeping arrangements situated, we climbed to the top of the Duomo, 463 concrete steps. It made me realize how out of shape I am! My legs were seriously sore for 2 days after! Once we got to the top, though, the view was INCREDIBLE! It was a perfect day, 60 degrees and not a cloud in the sky! From the top we could see for MILES! WE could even see the Alps in the distance, it was so incredible, I could have sat up at the top all day long, I took a lot of pictures, but just like everything else around here, the pictures just can’t do any justice! Later we walked around Florence and took in all of the beautiful scenery and wonderful shopping! Friday night Gina and a couple other friends we knew from St. Norbert took us out to a nice dinner and the to a club later for dancing! It was a blast!
Saturday we decided that we were going to see THE DAVID! We found the museum all on our own only to find out that once you got inside you couldn’t take pictures ☹ There was beautiful artwork that had been refinished to look as good as new! Everything was so amazing! Lucky for you guys, I’m pretty much a rebel and I took a picture of David from a distance! ☺ trust me, it was a harder task then one may think, every time someone took out a camera the “guards” would SCREAM at them, of course it was in Italian so I didn’t know what they were saying, but it never sounded good! I’m sneaky though, so I got this picture for you to see ☺
The rest of Saturday we walked around more of Florence and enjoyed the beautiful weather! We got dinner at MCDONALDS and got ready to head back to Rome on our 8:30 train…or so we thought…
We got on a bus that we thought led to the train station and when the bus came to its final destination and everyone got off, we realized we were WRONG. We were literally in the middle of nowhere! The bus driver didn’t speak English and none of us knew Italian well enough to understand what he was telling us! Luckily, this wonderful woman saw us struggling and spoke English. She told us that we had to take another bus to get to the train station, which would take us another HOUR….we only had about 45 minutes…we were freaking out! She could tell we had no idea what we were doing so she decided that she was going to lead us to the next bus stop. It was so nice of her, but the whole time I couldn’t help but thinking that she was going to rob us! Haha I know that is a terrible thought, but we decided that the 5 of us could take her on, so we weren’t as worried as you probably are while you are reading this right now (Amy! Ahah). So, the nice woman didn’t rob us, she just led us to our bus stop and we waited another 15 minutes for the bus to come, the whole time thinking we were going
to miss our train! We got on the bus and realized that we were reading the military time wrong, our train left at 930…not 830…things were looking up! Haha! The bus did end up taking about an hour and we passed Gina’s house where we originally left from! In the end, we made it to the train station with plenty of time to spare and got back to Rome successfully!Florence, minus the few glitches we encountered was a success! It was so beautiful and spending 2 days with friends from St. Norbert was a much needed taste of home☺ I would love to go back there and explore even more someday, perhaps when my navigating skills are a little better, and I know a little more Italian! If it taught us one thing tough, I would say that we are pretty tough and 463 STEEP steps, military time, trains and busses can’t stop us☺
Your pictures are great! Dad will be so proud of you! You certainly are tough and few things can stop a daughter of mine! Glad you had an adventure along with a taste of home for the weekend!
ReplyDeleteXXOO Mom