Florence

After the mentally overwhelming and physically exhausting days in Rome, Franny and I bought a train ticket and headed to Florence. I was so excited to go since I had heard that Florence is to Italy as Seville is to Spain. Since Rome had been jam-packed with sightseeing, I was really excited to just take it easy in Florence, spend some time with my friends studying in the city, and do some shopping for Italian goods. Some of my favorite things in Florence were…
1. Gelato!!! The most beautiful and delicious ice-cream I have ever seen/eaten. They really make it a work of art
2. Duomo of Florence (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)- This cathedral was really different than any other cathedral I’ve ever seen. The outside had all these marble panels in various shades of green and pink bordered by white. The inside had a very simple gothic architectural style. It is also the largest brick dome ever constructed. The line to go to the top of the dome was unfortunately waaayy to long.
3. Palazzo Pitti- The Pitti Palace is basically this giant palace with a collection of treasures, like jewelry, paintings, and decorative plates. There was this really interesting collection that walked you through the evolution of clothing. With so many fashion designers coming from Italy, it was cool to see the clothes that they displayed.
4. Boboli Gardens- Right behind the palace there are these vast and beautifully landscaped gardens. Franny and I were exhausted so we actually took a little power nap lying in the shade under a tree. We could see all of Florence from the top of one of the gardens.
5. Ponte Vecchio- literally means old bridge in Italian. This bridge was built in 972 AD and has survived everything from floods and fires to bombings in WWII. The bridge is lined with one jewelry shop after another.
6. The leather market- shopping makes me happy… what can I say? Ha I was looking for a leather jacket but was unsuccessful. One of the shop owners proved how good the quality of his leather jackets were by holding a lighter to them to prove they don’t light on fire.
7. Our hostel, Archi Rossi- Everything you could possibly need was there. They had this cute little courtyard, nice rooms and lockers, free internet and breakfast and was in an amazing location.
8. Pizza and pasta… obviously amazing.
9. Seeing my friends from IU! Made the trip a lot more memorable and they were all great hosts and showed Franny and I a good time in the city.

Everything was amazing in Florence until... We MISSED our flight home!! :( I was in shock when Franny woke me up and told me what time it was and then we realized that both of our phones had died. There was no way we were going to make it to the airport on time. I wish I had a map where I could trace our route of travel… it ended up being ridiculous! So we had to take the train from Florence to Pisa, which was the airport we were flying out of… Turns out there were no more flights to Sevilla so we decided to switch our flight to go to Barcelona to at least be in Spain. Unfortunately we had booked our flight with Ryanair, which is the shittiest airline in the world, no exaggeration. We had to wait all morning in the Pisa airport for our new flight that afternoon. So then their airport is over 1 hour outside of Barcelona in Girona and we had to take a bus into downtown Barcelona. Oh yeah… best part… it was pouring rain in Barcelona. Then we took a metro from the bus station to the main train station, only to find that the train to Sevilla was sold out. Since when do trains get sold out?!? So the guy at the ticket counter said that the best would be to take an overnight train to Córdoba. I had my first train hotel experience and slept in a little bed on the train. Once we got to Córdoba we immediately caught a train to Sevilla, then had to take a bus from the train station to our apartments. After over 24 hours of straight traveling and an empty wallet, we finally made it! ha I think I purchased a ticket for every form of public transportation except for boat… not kidding. It was an interesting adventure home to say the least, and I will never miss another flight in my life!

PS. Also…whoever told me that Italian is so close to Spanish and we would have no problems understanding it… they lied. Two completely differently spoken languages.

Outside of the Duomo

Inside the Cathedral


GELATO