Marinna Ventures to Italia: Fabulous Florence

I think I have a new favorite city in Italy! It's Florence! We had such a great time there! I can't wait to go back and visit! Good thing I threw my coins in the Trevi fountain!

We woke up early in Montecontini where our hotel was and drove about 45 minutes to Florence. We met up with our tour guides and set out on a walking tour of the city. Our tour guide today was Andrea, and he was very specific on making sure we all knew it was a male Italian name and not like the American womens name! Oh the things Italians bring up!

We walked all over the city seeing so many great sites and so many fun things! After our tour we were off on our own to wander around again! In our little group of five we all had different agendas! Peter wanted to go climb the duomo, Maura was just along for the ride, and Kate wanted to do some shopping, and Lexi wanted to visit the Uffizi museum of art. I was game for anything as long as I got to do some shopping!

After discussing all of these we decided the Uffizi was out because of the long line and we only had 5 hours in Florence and wanted to make the best of it not waiting in super long lines! We decided to climb the Duomo, then we would eat, and head for some shopping and other site seeing along the way. When we were walking to the place where our tour guide said we needed to get tickets we came across the Jersey Shore crew! Yes, Vinny and Pauli D.! I am not a huge fan but still kind of fun to see them! They wanted us to go eat at their restaurant but there was about a 20 minute wait and we had to sign a release form...so we said no way! When they were walking back towards the restaurant they made fun of us for not going!

Along the walk towards the Duomo we got so distracted with all of the fun shops and what not. Poor Peter putting up with four girls who love to shop! Peter is Maura's (my roommate) good friend from school! They came over here together! Anyways...we stood in line for about twenty five minutes at the Duomo before making the hike up the 461 stairs to the top! If you make it to Florence this is a must! It was such a great way to see the city especially for not having a lot of time to spend there! The city is so much different than what Rome looks like from the top of St. Peter's!

Going down seemed much quicker than the climb up the spiral stair case! But that could have been because we were all starving! So we hurried to get some food before heading to the river to take some more pictures and do some shopping! The clock was ticking!! Lunch was yet another delicious meal of pasta with pesto for me! The others had meat sauce with theirs!

We wandered for a while stopping in pretty much every leather store there was! Eventually we made it to the church where Michael Angelo and Galileo are supposedly buried under! Kind of cool! We decided we didn't need to go visit another church so we wandered back to the meeting spot in time for the rain to start sprinkling! There are pigeons everywhere here so they entertained us before our bus ride back to the hotel!

Once we got back to the hotel we had some downtime to check email and relax. Then it was time for another dinner! Another four course meal with fruit cups at the end for dessert! We had chicken and potatoes for the second meal and you should all be proud I ate tomato sauce on my pasta! And Saturday night we were able to get salad!

We went for a quick swim after dinner again! Enjoyed the water and cooled off! Then had to get some sleep early so we could get up for our winery tour in the morning! That will definitely have to be its own post! So much to tell there!

The church at our meeting point in Florence.

Even Disney likes Florence!

The bee was the family animal of the Medici family! Supposedly if you count these bee's three times before an exam and get the same number each time you will do well on the exam!