Food, Shopping and Leather: A Culmination Of My Weaknesses

And we're off! It's time for Part 2 of The Best Fall Break Ever: Florence.

Friday morning the Bike Crew (so named for our cycling adventures the day before) balled out of Roma. When we left the hostel to get our bikes from the pole we where we left them overnight we found this lovely note:

Questionable note left on our bikes.

Two questions: 1) What exactly was wrong with chaining our bikes to that pole? They weren't blocking anything. And 2) HOW DID THEY KNOW THAT THE OWNERS OF THE BIKES SPOKE ENGLISH AND NOT ITALIAN??? Weird.

The journey to the train station was all uphill, and we considered just leaving the bikes where they were. Luckily we all have souls and decided to return them because as we were walking out, the bike man called me back to give me my drivers license, which I forgot I had given him as collateral!

The three of us have all become experts at falling asleep in public places, and this train was no exception. We slept the entire way to Firenze. When we arrived, we discovered that even though we had directions to our hostel, the starting point from the WRONG train station. So instead of walking for three minutes, we had to get on Bus #17 to take us to the outskirts of town. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem, except I GOT STUNG BY A BEE. On the bus. What the heck! No one gets stung by bees anymore! Only small children and people who are allergic and somehow seem to attract bees to them. I was fine though. I didn't cry, there was only minor pain and swelling and the old man next to me leaned over and killed that sucker with his newspaper. So nice! We finally found the hostel, threw our bags in and left to go exploring. First order of business: food. Obviously. We found a precious little ristorante near the leather market area and all ate giant (and inexpensive!) plates of pasta that make my mouth water just thinking about it...

Lunch menu:

• Caitlin - Gnocchi with gorgonzola cheese and walnuts (she actually cried tears of happiness...I have a picture to prove it)
• Sofia - Lasagna (are you starting to notice a pattern here? Sofia ate lasagna literally every. single. day.)
• Elizabeth - Penne arrabbiata
  
• Parmesan cheese that was so good we wanted to eat it with the serving spoon, but we resisted.

Refreshed, recharged, and re-nourished, we set off on our Florentine adventures. We climbed the tower of Brunelleschi's Duomo...

The Bacon Wallet at the top of the tower in front of the Duomo.

...searched for the fake David statues (because we didn't want to pay lots of Euros to see the real one)...

Sofia, The Bacon Wallet and Fake David.

...and scoured through every inch of the famous leather markets (where I may or may not have bought an authentic Italian leather jacket possibly in addition to a pair of authentic Italian leather gloves).

Also we fulfilled our obligatory afternoon sugar quota with waffle/nutella sandwiches for Sofia and Caitlin and a waffle with tiramisu gelato for Elizabeth.

After journeying over to the Ponte Vecchio for some token sunset photos we freshened up at the hostel to get ready for DINNER and the rest of the night.

Token sunset pictures.

Dinner once again was glorious. We found a place near Piazza Santa Croce that at first glance looked empty but then we realized was packed! They seemed to be filling up the restaurant from the back towards the front. To me that's illogical. Wouldn't you want to fill up the front first so passersby can see how many people are enjoying your establishment? Whatever, that's their call. So anyway, we ate there, and we ate delicious things.

Dinner Menu:

• Appetizer of garlic bread with Italian sausage and sun dried tomatoes on top
• Caitlin - Canoli with spinach and ricotta cheese
• Sofia - Pasta carbonara
• Elizabeth - Cheese ravioli with pesto sauce
• Chianti DOCG, famous wine produced locally in Florence

After dinner Caitlin and Sofia were being lameos and decided to go back to the hostel to go to bed. I however, had a wild night ahead of me with none other than.........COUSIN KATIE WALSH STUDYING IN FLORENCE!!! It was so wonderful to finally see a familiar face. She took me out for a night on the town and we had an absolute ball.

Katie: "Guys, this is my cousin, Elizabeth. She's visiting from Spain!"
Rando (not Katie's friend): "Wait. You guys are actually BLOOD relatives?"
Katie: "Um, yes. Our dads are brothers."
Rando: "WOW."

She even got to meet The Bacon Wallet! They became fast friends. I think she was sorry to see him go...I know it was difficult for him.

New BBFs.

My third visit to Florence was a rousing success. This city remains at (or close to) the top of my list of favorite places ever. I wish we could have stayed longer than one day, but the next morning, we had to continue on our way.

Next up on "¡Holy Toledo!"...Part 3 of The Best Fall Break Ever: Pisa.



P.S. Quick side note: I would just like to express a few moments of anger here. It recently has come to my attention that someone else here in Toledo in my program at the Fundación created a blog. She named her blog Holy Toledo. WHAT!!!! SHE TOTALLY STOLE THAT FROM ME. Seriously, though. She did. We were roommates the first night in the Fund and I told her about my blog. Her reaction? "Omg, that's like such a cute idea! I like love that name! It's like SO adorable! I should like totally make a blog!" Obviously I encouraged her, since I was just getting started with my blogness and was slightly obsessed with it. But I didn't think she would take it this far. I am not pleased.



Anyway. Pisa coming soon.