Firenze

Christmas Day we woke up in Venice.  We had to make the 45 minute walk back to the train station with our luggage to catch a train to Florence. A Christmas Miracle occurred in the form of rain, so our suitcase with the broken wheel was gliding over the cobblestones.  We got to ride first class to Florence which meant we got free drinks and cookies.  Winning! 

 Once we got to Florence we checked into our 1-star prison cell. (Okay, it wasn't THAT bad, but I've never been so happy to leave a place in my life. Even Spencer thought it was terrible, he just isn't as dramatic as me ;)).  I don’t think there is a way I can paint a picture of this place to do it justice.  The springs bulged, the bed was NOT a double, we had to share the bathroom with several other rooms, the walls were paper thin so we could hear all our neighbors, it just looked old and nasty. I hated it. 

We spent the evening of Christmas Day wandering around the city. We saw the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (cathedral), walked across the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge, and ate another overpriced “Italian dinner”.  That night we went back to the hotel and called our families to hear about their Christmas mornings.

Some of the Christmas lights on one of the streets

The Ponte Vecchio bridge

The next day I woke up feeling pretty bummed out and burned out.  I was ready to get out of the city and see something with more variety.  I got really tired of the people trying to sell me purses and umbrellas and shaking cups in my face asking for money.  I wasn’t very pleasant to be with that morning (sorry Spencer).  So, we decided we could sleep in.  By the time we left, McDonalds breakfast had ended so we had burgers at 10:30 AM, yum.  We spent most of the day wandering around and taking more pictures.  Unfortunately, because it was Boxing Day in Europe, it was still a holiday, so a lot of stuff was closed.  In the end I decided half a day in Florence would’ve sufficed for me.  The highlights of my day were my gelato and my Belgian waffle with Nutella mmmmm.

A replica of Michaelangelo's "The David"...we didn't want to wait in line to see the real one.

The traffic in Florence was pure madness!

Friday we went to go pick up our rental car and escape from the city. We ended up getting an up grade on our car because they were out of smart cars. Our car was much bigger than a smart car, which was good for comfort, but was less convenient for parking anywhere (It was a “station wagon” by Italian standards). We spent most the day doing a scenic drive around Tuscany. The landscape looked like the menus at Olive Garden (I know, what an artsy description), but we actually did see lots of olive trees.

 We also drove through a beautiful mountain pass with lots of stone quarries and rivers. The quarries were so thick the mountains looked like they were snow capped.  We ended up reaching the coast right around sunset, so we took lots of pictures and sat on the beach until the sun went down. It was pretty warm as long as we kept our coats on, so we even took our shoes off and braved a walk in the waves.  It was totally spontaneous and was one of my favorite parts of our trip.

Kissing picture...sorry I'm not sorry ;)

Our hotel in the unknown city

Finally we set out in search of a hotel (we had decided for the Tuscany portion of our trip we wouldn't book our hotels in advance, so we could be spontaneous and just find a hotel wherever we ended up for the night). We passed lots of 4-star resorts along the coast, but wanted something less extreme. After a flustered hour and a half of finding nothing, we found a decent 2-star hotel in who-knows-where. (At this point, we officially decided our grand plan of finding hotels as we went was a bad one. Instead, we booked ourselves a hotel the night before so we could still be spontaneous, but also have a plan.)  We had dinner at a little pizzeria down the road and it was delicious! We finally had some good Italian food. Both the hotel worker and our waitress spoke very little English, so we spoke a lot of Spanglish and sign language, but it was so nice to be out of the tourist craziness!