Week 5 -Florence Weekend

The weekend after midterms was the most relaxed I’ve felt in a couple weeks. This past weekend my friends and I went to Florence which by far has been my favorite city in Italy. It has a different vibe from Rome, it was less chaotic and more open than in Rome which I really liked. We spent three days in the city. We stayed at one of my friend’s family’s home; which was really nice of them since they also gave us a tour of their hometown. On our first day we started off in the center of Florence, we walked around and saw many stands outside which reminded me of the flea market back home. It gave me a sense of comfort when I saw these stands. I ended up buying most of my souvenirs from them since they were also a lot cheaper compared to things I would find in Rome. I also learned that Pinocchio was actually based in Florence, so, many of the items I saw were puppets of Pinocchio. After walking around in the centroid we came upon a person playing “Hallelujah” on the accordion in front of a Carlisle. I’ve been here a month now and for some reason in that moment it hit me that I was actually in Italy which made me tear up. I’m not really sure why it took me so long to set in but I’m glad it did when it did, it helped turn that moment into a memory I’ll always look back on. After this moment we decided to walk to a gelato shop so we ended up passing Florence’s Dome and we also passed by its famous gold door. Once we arrived there my friend’s family bought us gelato. I got almondorang , caramel, and cheesecake flavored gelato which sounds like a weird combination but it was the best gelato I’ve had since my time in Italy. The next day we decided to explore more of Florence so we started our day at the Gucci Garden which was a fun experience. Fun tip if you are a student the entrance fee is only €5, after going into all the cool rooms we finished our tour at the gift shop to look around but as imagined we walked right out after looking at the prices. We also went to the famous wine window where we relaxed with a glass of wine and people watched. FInally we ended up going to a restaurant to try one of the foods that Florence is known for, Bistecca alla Firenze. We ended up waiting an hour to get a seat and although it was a nice experience we weren’t ready to find out that we didn’t have a choice on how cooked our meat could be. This meant that we could only have it rare so we decided to give it a chance since we’ve never had it cooked like that. Unfortunately since we are not used to having it cooked that little we all ended up with stomach aches at the end of the day but we still appreciated the entire meal. We ended up taking half of it home and cooking it to our liking. On our final day we decided to visit the Tuscany countryside which was extremely beautiful. Since we had our bus early that day we only experienced it for a little while but overall we had a great time and I hope to visit again before I leave Italy.