Hey guys! Thanks for coming back to read my travel blog! This blog is about the amazing, wonderful, lovely time we spent in Florence, Italy! We spent three nights and three days in Florence. We traveled from Rome to Florence by train. We got the tickets for about $30 dollars, a really great deal! In Italy, I would highly recommend traveling between cities by train, the train system is simple, it's easy to book tickets on their machines, the trains are really nice, and the trains are high-speed.
So we waited for our train, and boarded! We meet a really nice guy from Russia, and we talked with him for the three hour ride. We got off at our stop, and I had mapped out the walking directions, but my GPS was not having it! So we walked in circles for a while and walked back to the station. We got a taxi, and thank goodness, because the hostel we booked was also a camp ground, and the entrance is a long walk up a desolate road. Needless to say, we were a little nervous. We got to the office, and of coarse we had to pay more in taxes. Then they brought us to our room. We had a room with our own bathroom, yay. However, it had mold. We just sucked it up and figured we were only spending a few hours there, and decided it wasn't worth the hassle of complaining.
Besides being a hostel, campground, and a rentable venue, the place we stayed at was also a dormitory for a small school that was funded by the Italian government, that brings over men from foreign countries, and teaches them Italian so they can file for papers to move to Italy. We meet some very interesting characters there! The hostel provided breakfast, so that was nice! The first day we got to Florence, we traveled to the Hostel, so we decided to stay at the Hostel and relax.
The next morning, we set off for the city center of Florence. The City center is located right by the St. Maria Novella Station. If you are going to Florence, you can stay either in the city center, which is more expensive or stay in one of the surrounding cities, which is what we did. We took a bus to the train station, about a 10 minute or so ride. It started to rain, so hid for a little in the station, bought an expensive map, because I left the hostel free one at home, opps, and then we started walking around to see the sites.
There is so much to see and do in Florence, but large monuments, and such are fairly close to each-other, and you can see it in one day, if you try and plan very well! Without planning well, we were still able to see everything we wanted to on our first day there. I absolutely fell in love with Florence. And I will say it was by far my favorite place we visited during our entire month-long excursion in Europe.
The streets of Florence, are very simple to navigate, and they all tend to lead in the same direction. We first walked to the St. Maria Novella Duomo, which is a large church that is now more of a museum. You can pay to go inside, we didn't. The Duomo is magnificent! The details, are unbelievable, it is a gothic style cathedral, and is over 500 years old! The Duomo sits in the middle of a plaza or a Piazza in Italian. The surrounding buildings are dwarfed in comparison.
Then we walked over to the Museum that houses the Statue of David, which I wanted to see so so badly! We thought we were in the wrong place, lol, so we turned around and walked around. I also found out that it was going to be something like $20 dollars a person to get in, so that was a no-go. We decided in Rome, that we weren't going to pay a lot to see things unless we were absolutely dying to see it, and unfortunately for David, he just didn't make it on the list. But we got lucky, and if you feel the same as us, you can get lucky, because Florence has a "Fake David" statue, which is almost as good. It was good enough for us! I would highly highly recommend seeing "Fake David" even if you plan on seeing the real David, and heres why. The Fake David sits on top of this huge, and I mean huge mountain top (?), not really sure if its a mountain, and you can see all of Florence from there !
Bonus, there is a small garden a little over half-way up the large and traitorous hike to the top. And the garden has benches and you can sit and relax. It was so beautiful! It rained on-and-off, and about 5 minutes after we saw fake david, it poured. But it made the sky-line look amazing!
The sun shone on the mountains in the horizon, and It was unspeakably beautiful. A moment I will truly cherish, it felt like one of those moments where the Heavens open and shine. I could not even capture the true beauty. Funny side note, as we were gazing at the beautiful city below, we heard some very thick accent Texans asking us to take their picture. They had fanny-packs and all. We laughed as we walked back down. We found the short-cut, by the way, there is one, UGH!
As we walked around Florence, we stopped and ate at one of those tourist trap restaurants, right in the middle of the center of florence, and It was actually a good deal, and the food was amazing. In Europe, in general you can find food for fairly good deals, just don't buy drinks. The drinks are outrageous, as well as water. Make sure to bring a water bottle with you, and I would highly, highly, HIGHLY, recommend what my friends did, what I wanted to do, but decided to not do last minute, and that is to bring a water bottle with a filter built in. The main reason, money, but also because you can get water from anywhere, including bathroom sinks, sketchy looking water fountains, and from the hotel. I wanted to buy some, and found a great deal at Target for about 14 dollars for two, but I didn't want to spend the money. BOY was I silly, because we ended up spending way, way more on buying water, then we would have if we had just bought the water bottles. I stand by this advice, and say it is the number one thing you should bring with you to Europe! NO JOKE!
Moving on, we then walked to the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge, which is a small bridge that has small jewelry shops along it. The jewelry is very expensive. In and around the bridge there's many shops and stores to shop at! There are many stands that sell beautiful leather and other souvenirs. I got a beautiful purse! We stopped and ate some yummy food, and gelato! Walking to Ponte Vecchio bridge from the Duamo, you can walk through a small statue garden. It was a great place for us to stop and rest our tiered feet.
Halfway on the bridge, there is a small cut-out area where you can stop and see down the river. It is such a beautiful view, and the perfect place to snap a few pictures!
Our second day in Florence, we explored more around the city! It rained more, and I didn't think I needed to take pictures of the same things! On our second day, my throat began to feel a little soar, I figured that I had slept with my mouth open. I ate extra gelato that day, but as the day went on I started to feel sick. We cut our day a little short, and headed back to our hostel, where we spent time talking with some of the local residents and ate the hostel provided dinner! The hostel had a laundry area, and we were able to pay about 10 dollars to do a load of laundry, but it was well worth it! We were about halfway or a little less into our trip, and we had gone through most of our clothes. We packed enough clothes to last a little over halfway through our trip, so we would only have to wash our clothes once! Here's a tip about laundry, we planned to wash clothes in sinks and such, but many hostels have signs and shared bathrooms and do not want you to wash your clothes in the bathroom ( Can't image why, lol.) We got up early, packed our bags, and headed to the train station to get a train to Pisa!
Thanks for reading!