We arrived in Florence a little after 7:00 on Thursday
hungry (as always) and anxious to see the city.
First things first we saw the famous Duomo at night. What a sight, I had no idea how HUMONGOUS it
is—and beautiful.
Unfortunately for us… we were locked out of our hostel! We
had emailed them letting them know we’d arrive between 7:15 and 7:30 and they
confirmed… but no one was answering!
Kimber and I both accidentally left our international phones in Lugano
so we couldn’t even call. Luckily a
group walked outside of the building about 15 minutes after we were waiting so
we were able to go inside but there was a separate door to actually enter the
hostel so we were still locked out.
Finally Emily decided to turn on her data and call them to see what was
up. They were apparently having issues
at another hostel location they owned and we had to wait another 20
minutes. We weren’t too happy to start
out BUT in the end the hostel ended up being really great! The room was
spacious and the owner was incredibly helpful all weekend long. We decided to go to “il Gatto e la Volpe” for
dinner because it had been recommended by friends. I ordered the penne alla vodka (my favorite
pasta) and it was absolutely incredible.
I can’t decide if it was that I was so hungry or if it really was as
amazing as I felt like it tasted.
We were all pretty satisfied with our meals; it’s hard to go
wrong with pasta in Italy. Chelsea
ordered the biggest calzone I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
After dinner we were in search for dessert. I still had not gotten an Italian cannoli
throughout my travels so that was what I decided on. THANK GOD I did…. It was phenomenal. Maybe I should change the name of my blog to
“Eating my way through Europe” since the majority of my posts have paragraphs
devoted to my meals.
but really… I couldn’t go to Italy without ever enjoying a
cannoli. After dinner we went to a nearby bar’s happy hour for an hour or so
but we were all so tired from the week we didn’t stay out too late so we could
get an early start in the morning. Our
first stop was to go see Michelangelo’s “David” in the Accademia but…. The line
was incredibly long and we only had this full day in Florence so we decided the
fake David would have to do.
Then we made our way to the indoor markets at Mercato
Centrale. Fresh homemade pasta, dried
fruits, veggies, meats, cookies… everything you want, it was there. I wish we had these at home… I rarely ever
end up getting anything to eat when we go to the markets in various cities, but
if they were at home I’d go ham buying ingredients things to make different
meals with.
Right outside of the indoor market is the infamous….drumroll
please… Florence leather markets! The amount of self-control it took to walk
through the streets on streets on streeeeets of leather stands is unbelievable.
After a few hours of haggling, walking away, re-haggling,
and then coming out victorious I got to bring home a few goodies to give as
gifts and the most beautiful bag I’ll ever own…
By now I’m definitely a pro… mom raised me right as a
bargain shopper. I wouldn’t settle for
anything more than the price I was willing to offer and 9/10 times I got
it! I always started super low and
they’d tell me that I was absurd and then we’d end up meeting somewhere a
little above my original offer (but less than the max I’d be willing to
pay). The four of us walked away very
happy girls. Thank god I don’t study
abroad in Florence (it’s the study abroad capital of the world) because I’m not
sure how I could keep myself away from that market every weekend. The next stop was Gusta Pizza.
Everyone who had already been to Florence told us it was a
must! The line was out the door and we
had to wait about 45 minutes but it was certainly well worth the wait. The
pizzas were different than any we had gotten elsewhere and were quite
scrumptious.
After pizza we walked across the Ponte Vecchio Bridge, had a
miniature photo shoot, and made our way to Gelato.
La Carraia was hands down the BEST gelato I’ve had yet. A friend who had studied in Florence
recommended it. It was just a little
hole in the wall on the less touristy side of town. We all went ahead and went for the three
scooper. I got chocolate chip, Nutella,
and Mint chocolate chip.
After relaxing and enjoying our ice cream we made the hike
up to Piazzale Michelangelo to see the panoramic views of the city. It was definitely worth the stairs on stairs
we climbed…
…because the view was absolutely beautiful. You could see the entire city! And you could see from above how gigantic the
duomo is.
We wanted to stay for the sunset but unfortunately it was a
really cloudy day so we wouldn’t have been able to see it anyways. Afterwards, we headed back towards the
Duomo.
Unfortunately for us we had the
wrong operating times and it was closed when we got there. We were a little bummed but still had an
amazing day in Florence! We went back to
our room to get ready for dinner and the hostel owner redirected our dinner
plans. He laughed when we said we
planned on going to Zaza and told us a much better place to go to called Trattoria
Il Contadino. Then we decided to ask him
about the secret bakeries we had heard about.
Apparently these bakeries open up at 1 am every weekend night with no
sign or anything indicating where they are.
You find out strictly by word of mouth and it’s a very hush hush
operation because they work only in cash… making their money tax free. LUCKY FOR US the hostel owner is good friends
with one of the guys who owns one!! He gave us the exact address and told us to
arrive around 1 am… but to be quiet because the people living above get very
upset at noise and will throw buckets of water out the window if you’re
loud! After mapping everything out, we
made our way to dinner.
Dinner was fabulous!
3 courses for 13 euro—we began with penne with creamy sausage sauce,
followed by swordfish and roasted potatoes.
Mmhhm mhhhm good.
Dinner was great but one thing that really frustrated us was
that they allowed street peddlers to come into the restaurant and try to sell
things to you while you were eating!! They are annoying enough on the
street! It happened at lunch too! This
man came in trying to sell bracelets and light up thingys. It wasn’t so bad at dinner because they were
just selling roses… but we weren’t too happy with it. After dinner we met up with some boys from
Tech that were are in another study abroad program that happened to be in
Florence for the weekend as well! We had
run into them on the way out of the leather markets and made plans to all go
out together later on. They wanted to
watch a basketball game so we found a sports bar and hung out there anxiously
awaiting 1:00 am.
When the time came we were happy to find that we were only
one street away from the secret bakery!
It was the sketchiest transaction I’ve ever been a part of. This man peeks his head out of a frosted
glass door (so you can’t see inside) and asks “What do you want” we responded
with 6 chocolate croissants, to which he responded “6 euro” and closed the
door. He opened the door, collected the
money, then handed us the croissants and that was that!
They were heavenly though!! We all contemplated knocking
again to get seconds… but decided better not to. After our croissants we headed back towards
the hostel because we had to catch an 8 am bus for our wine tour in Tuscany the
next morning!
We woke up
and hopped on the bus for the wine tour excited to see Siena, San Gimignano, and Pisa—all the places they would take us throughout the day. Our tour guide, Stefano, was absolutely
wonderful. He was so excited to be
giving the tour and always laughing at himself and making jokes… he really made
the whole experience ten times better by being so happy to be there. The first stop Sienna is one of the more
popular cities in Tuscany. They have
annual horse races in the main plaza. The
cathedral, duomo di Siena, was really unique compared to the other cathedrals
we had visited.
It is characterized by the thick stripes all
throughout. At first it is a bit
overwhelming but after you get used to it, it is actually quite nice. It may have been one of my favorites because
it was so different!
Inside the cathedral is the libreria piccolominea. This library was actually never used, so it
stayed beautiful throughout history. The
ceiling is the most magnificent part.
Our next stop was the farm in San Gimignano for lunch and the wine
tasting! We began with garlic bread with
the best olive oil I’ve ever tasted and a white wine. The second course was pasta with red-
chianti. The third course was a salad
with cheese and meats and another red wine.
We finished with a dessert wine and almond biscuits.
I enjoyed all of the wines very much. The food was delicious as well! All of it was
fresh from the farm where we were eating.
The almond biscuits were my favorite… looking back I wish I had bought
some to bring home (though I am not sure they would have made it all the way
home… but certainly to Lugano at least!).
After lunch we went
into the town of San Gimignano where we had gelato from the world champion gelato
makers. It was amazing. Definitely among the top of the gelato I’d
had so far.
It had a beautiful gold ceiling and columns leading down the
sides towards the front. It was another
beautiful cathedral for sure.
Then we went outside to take the typical touristy photos by
the leaning tower of Pisa.
Lucky for us because it hadn’t been the most beautiful day
outside (we had rain for a little while in Sienna) the weather was clear and a
rainbow was running overtop of the tower!
After Pisa we hopped back on the “shoo shoo” train as
Stefano would call it and headed towards our bus that would take us back to
Florence.
We arrived back in Florence around 8:30 and headed back
towards the hostel to meet with Chelsea (who hadn’t gone on the wine tour) and
get ready for dinner and our night. We
went out for a little while but came back early because we were all getting up
early the next morning and the time changed!
Well… the time change threw us off even though we tried our best to get
it right and Kimber and I missed our first train to Cinque Terre. Not to worry, we caught the next one but just
had a bit of a late start to our day.
Cinque Terre is about an hour and a half away from Florence and it means "Five Lands." It is basically 5 different towns along the
coast of Italy that have beautiful hikes that take you to each of them. We started our day in Monterosso. I was in awe from the minute we got off of
the train-- it was so beautiful.
We arrived around lunch time so we had lunch at a cute
little restaurant RIGHT on top of the water.
It was beautiful. I couldn’t have
asked for a better Easter Sunday.
The water ran right below the deck we were sitting on and we
had the most beautiful views surrounding us.
After lunch we got started.
Our friends that had already gone told us to ignore the “trail closed”
signs and to keep going…so when we arrived at our first barrier, a fence with
tape over it saying trail closed, we deliberated for a while and then hopped
over with the conclusion that everyone had told us they would say they were
closed but to go anyways. We walked about 2 minutes then came across yet
ANOTHER fence with obviously recent posts absolutely not allowing anyone to
pass through… we thought about it a while and decided that there was absolutely
no way that Bryce at 6 foot 2 was able to climb under this fence…. Plus they
had told us they’d be closed but never mentioned any barriers, so we gave up on
the hike, bummed at our loss.
We then
rode the train over to Vernazza the next town over (it is just a 5-10 minute
ride).
When we arrived we saw that the entrance to the trail
heading back to Monterosso was not blocked!
We saw other people going onto the trail so we decided to go for
it. Within the first 5 minutes we
weren’t disappointed. Looking back down
onto Vernazza was breathtaking.
Definitely the most stunning place I had been yet.
The whole hike is about an hour and a half long and
beautiful the entire way. It is along
the coast and whenever you weren’t looking out at the ocean you were going past
a waterfall or something of the sort.
Coming back down at the end we had great views of Monterosso
too.
When we finished it was around 3:30 and we had planned to go
to the third town before heading back to the train station. We didn’t have time for another hike but we
wanted to at least see the town.
Unfortunately they cancelled the train and we had to wait 45 minutes
which at this point would put us past 5:00.
Because of the delay we decided to just head straight to the train
station because we needed time to grab our bags we had stored and catch the
train back to Lugano as I was leaving for Africa the next day! The whole train ride is supposed to take 20
minutes. I am not sure what the deal
was…. I guess it being Easter and that apparently Italian trains are unreliable
(something I didn’t know before this) but it took about an hour to reach the
main train station. We were a few
minutes late for our first train option because of this but it didn’t matter
because we could catch the next one. I
go to look up at the board and the next one isn’t up there. We went into the office to ask and they said
“Oh they cancelled it you’ll have to take the 8:00.” WHAT!?!?!! How the heck do they just cancel a
train!? We had reservations and everything for our connection but they were
useless without the first train. Not to
mention I had to leave for Africa at 5:30 am and now had ZERO options to bring
me back to Lugano in time. This sent me
into full panic mode and what had been a perfect Easter turned into absolute
disaster. We ran across the street into
a hotel and begged to use their wifi to look up any other options we had. We found a train to Milan that would arrive
about 20 minutes AFTER the last train to Lugano. We then looked at buses, subways, ANYTHING to
get us closer than Milan because a cab from Milan would cost around $400. The only thing we could find was a train into
Lake Como (30-40 minutes outside of Lugano) that would arrive at 1:45 in the
morning. I called Julien (one of our
directors in Lugano) and asked him if he knew what we should do. He told us to go to como and he would pick us
up from there or we would figure it out.
We had to wait an our for the train and the whole time Kimber had to
calm me down saying I’d make it to Africa, not to worry…. Then finally we were
on our way. When we got to Milan we
found a train headed to Chiasso which is only about 20-25 minutes outside of
Lugano. We found wifi again and called
Julien and he said he would call a cab to wait for us there since we wouldn’t
arrive until around 2:00 am. Well…. I
know Lugano and I know how expensive the cabs are… 125 CHF later we were home
in the Montarina. $130 for a 20 minute
cab ride. The last weekend trip of my
study abroad… I’m already broke as can be and the more unfortunate of
unfortunate events happens and I’m out an additional $130. Lesson learned… yes I want to see the world
but when I have a trip at 5:30 am the next morning maybe it’s best not to take
that final Sunday day trip. I’ll take
the fault for that… had I not needed to leave for Africa we could have stayed
in a hostel and caught a train the next morning, it certainly would have been
cheaper. Oh well. I learned my lesson. Up until around 4 pm on Sunday it was a
fantastic weekend. We lucked out because
it was supposed to rain all weekend and we never had more than 20 minutes of
rain and then Sunday was an unexpected warm and unbelievably sunny, beautiful
day. I’ll have to go back to Cinque
Terre to do all of the hikes some time…. when I’ve got more time.
