Firenze

I was definitely looking forward to our group trip to Florence this past week. We left on Wednesday the 8th and took the Eurostar train, which took us to Florence in only an hour and a half. We had a pretty jam-packed schedule each day, with Lisa dragging us all over town to visit various museums and historic sites. A highlight of the first day was climbing the dome of the church of Santa Maria del Fiore. Although the experience was not cheap (8 euro) a group of us chose to wait in line and hike up the 463 stairs to the top of the duomo. It was fun climbing up, because we had to go through windy dark passageways that circled the dome until we emerged at the observation deck. Of course, there was a fantastic view of the city of Florence.

Each day Lisa gave us homework assignments called "Quests," based on the material from her lectures. One time we had to compare statues of St. John and St. Mark, and another time our quest asked us to investigate two gelato places and judge the quality of the gelato! Overall, the quest was not as fun as we had expected, but it did give us something to do in the afternoons and evenings.

We tried out a couple good restaurants. I had rigatoni and sausage at our first group dinner, and then another night Cat and I split rabbit ravioli and a giant leg of turkey! We were pleasantly surprised by the turkey, because we ordered it without knowing what we were getting.

Florence is famous for its leather markets, so we were all excited to pick up some bags, jackets, wallets, and belts. Lisa took us all to a nice leather purse store, and we got excellent discounts because she was friends with the owner! I was NOT intending to buy a purse, but I ended up walking out with one anyway, marked down from 80 euro to 50. Definitely my one splurge of the trip!

Our last night we hiked up a hill for an AWESOME view of Florence and the Arno River at sunset.