Today was the first day of our last three day weekend in Italy and a few of us wanted to change some things up. Now don’t get me wrong, we all love Rome but I feel that I have seen all that I want to see of Rome so instead of staying in Rome again this weekend a group of us decided to make a day trip to Florence! We started out first thing in the morning by catching the 9:05 slow train to Florence. After about a three and a half hour trip we arrived in Florence. Once we arrived we first got settled in by going and getting some pizza and calzones at a corner store because we were all starving. This is where we figured out that today was going to be a good day; the first meal that we had in Florence was AMAZING! It filled me right up and it was cheap. After we finished our meal we went and visited Santa Maria del Fiore. This is when I started to realize that the architecture in Florence was more from a renaissance period compared to the mixed architecture of Rome. Santa Maria was beautiful from the outside and was decorated in ornate and extremely detailed decorations. When you stepped inside the architecture changed to a very simplistic and plain design with only a few details here and there. It was a pleasure to the eye to see this change in architecture because I have been getting a little tired with the Roman architecture. After we finished touring the inside of Santa Maria we decided to climb to the top of the cupola just like we did at Saint Peters. The only difference with this hike was that it was a lot easier than Saint Peters but you got a much better view. From the top of Santa Maria you could see the outskirts of town and if you circled around the entire dome you could view all of Florence. It was another spectacular that was really worth seeing. After we finished touring the church we decided to start to just walk around Florence because one of the downsides to visiting Florence is that you have to pay to enter most exhibits and churches. So we just started walking around and sooner or later we ended up finding a place to shop which the girls in our group loved. This is also when I was able to get some photographs, like the one above, of the city and the beautiful architecture that it has to offer. After we finished up most of the shopping it was time to go to dinner. So our group went out and got dinner at a little restaurant on a side street next to Santa Maria. The food was excellent once again and it was cheap! It was also here that I realized how much more English was spoken in Florence compared to Rome. Pretty much everyone that was at dinner and the waiter were able to speak English and so did most of the other people that we met along the way throughout the night. Heck I even met a woman from Connecticut at dinner who was there with her husband for a few weeks. It was really a nice change of pace to be able to actually communicate with people rather than having to use jargoned Italian in order to get around. After this we headed out wandering towards a market on the other side of the town. On the way we stopped and got Gelato. This was the best Gelato that I have had yet! I got a strawberry gelato on top of a fresh made waffled covered in hot Nutella. It was so delicious. After we got our gelato we continued to walk along the side streets of Florence and the women continued to shop. As the day drew to an end we headed back to the train station to catch a high speed train back to Rome. After a twenty minute delay we boarded the train and now we are heading back to Rome. When we get back I’m going to freshen up and then go to bed to get a good night’s rest before the rest of the long weekend comes along. I do want to say that the side trips are definitely something that everyone should do and that I loved traveling out of Rome to do what I wanted to do.
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