What a FIRENZE!

After the train fiasco in Venice, we got to Florence a little later than desired, but checked into our hostel around 4 pm. There, we met up with Fried (my friend from home, if you still haven't caught on) and his friend from his program, Alyssa. With a list of sights recommended by my big sis (Thanks, Em!), we decided to head to Piazza Michaelangelo for a view of the sunset over Florence. We got to the top of the hill just in time to see the beautiful colors of the sunset. The 5 of us were in no rush to leave this beautiful scenery, so we grabbed a bottle of wine to enjoy and chatted whilst looking over Firenze (that's "Florence" in Italian).

Once darkness starting creeping over the city, we decided to head back down towards the city center. For dinner, we ate a free meal at our hostel with about 10 other college students staying there. It was an awesome experience. The B&B Maison was the most fun hostel due to this fact. While eating soup, we mingled and made friends with the other backpackers. After dinner, we all hit up Florence's night life together. It was the true hostel, travelers' experience I had been looking for all semester. Everyone meshed really well- one of the kids we met, Dave, is even coming to Madrid this weekend b/c Tori and I convinced him to.

The next morning, it took me a little while to get out of bed due to the amount of fun I had the night before. Fortunately, I got over my 3 hour bout of the flu, and met up with the gang at the Duomo. This cathedral was one of the coolest throughout Europe. The building was huge and the outside was elaborate. What set this church apart from the rest, though, was the green and white facade and the massive dome. The dome is actually the largest brick dome in the world, containing over 4 million bricks!

After taking in this church, we all grabbed some pizza for lunch-what else, right? From lunch, we headed to the Accademia where the statue David is kept. For once, I understood why this statue is so important. Seeing it up close and personal was impressive. The statue itself stands 17 ft and carved out of one block of marble. All I can say is "Props, Michaelangelo, props". After checking out the rest of the gallery, we met up with one of Haley's friends, Roy, for the remainder of the evening. With him, we checked out Ponte Vecchio, the only Florentine bridge that survived WWII that now is the site of many gold vendors. From here, Roy took us to an amazing gelateria for our last taste of Florence. After ice cream, we picked up our bags from the hostel, and headed to the train station for the last time....