Florence

Saturday 25 October 2008

Ceci, I bought a pomegranate today and as I was eating it in my hostel room I thought of you and that time we at pomegranates.
Today we have pretty much seen everything in Florence, well the stuff that's free. We wandered into the right places, it seems, all the piazzas and the bridge. The gardens de Boboli were 10 euro so we didn't do those. For lunch we bought fruit, almonds, yoghurt, and kinder bars and just snacked on them.
We started out at about 9:45 and went to the train station for tickets to Pisa tomorrow, but we didnt need them because it's just an inter-city train and no reservation is required. After that we sat outside the station and ate a yoghurt and admired the architecture of the Romanesque cathedral. Once we figured out where we were on the map we made our way to the Doumo and the Baptistry. I wanted to see the statues of the Davids that are in one of the museums but the line was huge so we decided to keep walking and go to the river. There we found ourselves next to the bridge from the 14th century, that famous one with all the jewelry shops along it. Shortly after browsing the wares of several shops we discovered that everything was out of our price range and moved on.
Later that night, after siesta, we made our way to the piazza that overlooks the entire city. We got there in good time for the sunset, and though it was raining earlier the clouds had cleared and the sunset was hitting the last of them turning them purple. For dinner we found a pizzaria, then made our way back to the room because it was already dark and we didn't know of anything else to do.

Vacation

Friday, 24 October 2008

The first day of Vacation and I've already taken a bus, a plane, and a train. Now I'm in Florecne, in a decent hostel getting ready to go to bed. Traveling when you're not sure what language to speak can be difficult, I could ask questions in Spanish or English and all depending on the answer I want. We mostly spoke in English, throwing in Spanish words here and there, trying to pick up on the italian language. It's very similar to Spanish but there's a different lilt. I don't know if I'll pick it up in just a week, tomorrow is Explore Day #1. We need a map though so we have to find that first. I'm excited and nervous and scared. I just don't want to screw something up.
Italy is in the full swing of fall traveling through the ountryside for 5 hours (due to overbooked trains) I noteced that North Italy looks a bit like the midwest. Harvested fields sitting empty next to budding fields of some winter harvest. John Deeres plowing away, the major difference is the extensive history.