As soon as we got to Florence (Firenze) we found our hostel and dropped our packs off. Then we went and had a pretty interesting dinner. The restaurant was in a square that had various shops, clubs and other places to eat. We were sat at a table in between two couples. The couple on our left was in their own world; obviously used to this sort of arrangement. On our right was a young Holland couple on their honeymoon. They were not so familiar with this set up. In fact, at the beginning of the meal, the guy asked our waitress if there were any individual tables available, but luckily, there were none open. Their names were Bart and Coralie and spoke very good English. I'm not sure what the turning point of the evening was (probably when they had to order for us because the waitress didn't speak any English), but by the end of the meal we were all laughing and having a blast. Bart grabbed our waitress at the end of the meal and told her that this was a great idea for seating and that they had made life-long friends. We finished the night by having a few bottles of wine with our new "life-long" friends at a couple different places. We have actually stayed in touch with Coralie via facebook.
The next day we hit up all of the typical tourist activities which included climbing the Piazza Del Duamo; which is ranked as the number 1 thing to do in Europe by a lot of travel guides because of the view. We also saw all of the Florence art works like the Da Vinci Museum, the Birth of Venus, the Medusa shield, and we went to the museum Galleria dell'Accademia where we saw the David. You're not supposed to take pictures of the David, so naturally EVERYONE tries to take a picture and then act like they were just cleaning their camera. This gave Chadly and me an arsenal of new jokes because of the security screaming, "NO PHOTO!!" at tourists.
After we were done touring for the day, we went and found a hill that overlooked all of Florence where we enjoyed a bottle of wine and another breath-taking sunset.
Florence was kind of a blur. It seems like a lot of Italy gets blended together when I look back. All of the architecture and art was very similar through the entire country so that was probably a major contributing factor.
Bart and Coralie
I am so glad that you are finally getting around to finishing this. I love the pictures and stories. Florence holds a special place for us, because that is where Aunt Di broke her arm. Try going to a NON-English county hospital to communicate with someone. Oh, the memories. Keep writing.
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