We're Not in Italy Anymore...

Last Saturday we woke up with the same mindset..."Let's do something today!"  At first thought, I came up with several things to do on Saturday, such as laundry, cleaning and perhaps even swiffering the floor.  Conversely, Brenden thought it would be a good idea to go to Florence...why not?!  I'm a planner, so the thought of a spontaneous road trip made me a bit nauseous, but I went along with it.  After packing a quick back and booking a hotel, we were off.

Destination: Florence

The drive to Florence was only about 2.5 hours through some interesting scenery.  As we headed south, we ran into mountains and twisting highway roads.  The further south we got, the more snow there seemed to be on the mountains...a strange observation since we have not have snow on the mountains near us in recent weeks.  When we finally arrived in Firenze, we regretted the decision to drive.  Next time, we're taking the train.

Florence- or Firenze in Italian- is a crazy city that is not at all like the Italy where we live.  From what others had said about the city (it's touristy, crowded, tacky) I was prepared to hate it.  For the first two hours, I did.  Imagine Boston's amazing drivers on streets half the size....and add vespas, bicyclists and tourist.  Driving was a nightmare and we certainly won't be driving any further south (as we hear it gets even worse).  In our haste to leave for our spontaneous trip, we failed to write down all the information for our hotel.  Although we had an address, we spent a good 45 minutes on one street walking up and down.  Addresses in Florence are separated by residential and business.  Our awesome GPS sent us to the residential number, which conveniently enough, was at the opposite end of the street from our hotel.  Lucky for us, there were about 50 hotels on the same street and we were working on some weak assumptions- Me- "It begins with an E". and Brenden- "It definitely had a G in the name".  Turns out, we were both wrong. When we finally found the hotel, they had no record of a reservation for us (because it had not come through yet) but they kindly trusted us and let us stay.

We headed out to see the sites in Florence and made the following observations:

1. The marble of the Duomo is very different in this area than in other parts of Italy.  Instead of dark stone and  brick, the Duomo is a nice combination of green and light color marble.  It makes for a pretty church.

The Pretty Duomo

2. There are so many Americans in Florence.  College students and tourists are everywhere.  We heard English more than we heard Italian.  No wonder they are filming Jersey Shore here.

3.  We saw things in Florence that we've never seen in the rest of Italy....a brunch menu?  take out coffee?  a Ben and Jerry's?  Gluten Free pizza?  (OK not at all complaining about the last one!)

You better believe we are here!

4. Michaelangelo's David is the best statue ever and you should go see it.  Something about it is captivating and you could stare at it for hours....or at least until the American college student ruins the atmosphere by yelling to her friend, "I need to find a man that looks like this!"

Illegal picture of David!

5. The city is a nice combination of southern and northern Italy and rightly so given its central location.  While parts of it reminded me of Rome, the small streets and architecture gave it a more quaint, Renaissance feel.  Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the city.

After dinner and a chocolate festival we stumbled onto, we headed to an Irish pub and decided to check it out.  Inside, we found ourselves lost in a sea of college t-shirts hanging from the ceiling.  Oddly enough, many were from small New England schools.....Bentley, Stonehill, Endicott, Clark, Roger Williams, UMASS Dartmouth...Again, we were in Italy, not Quincy.  We also met some Australian businessmen who wanted to chat it up.  In typical Australian form, they kept trying to buy us drinks and even asked if we wanted to go to a strip club with them....no thanks mate.  We promptly left.

Florence was a pleasant surprise and an easy trip for us.  If we ever want a taste of America, we'll have to head back.