First Weekend: Florence Italy

After a very long first week of class it was finally Friday. We (Jack, Casey, Brendan, Tyler, Christian, and myself) had settled on going to Florence, Italy for the weekend. We decided to coordinate our trip with Jill, Megan, Kayley, and Liza because they had heard of some great places to go in Florence, needless to say next time we'll just meet them there. After about 3 hours of trains we had arrived and it was a great feeling to get away from school. The 10 of us were all staying in Alex's hostel about a 2 minute walk from the center of Florence. Once we got to the hostel we settled in we figured out what we were going to do that night. We decided on going to have drinks at the rooftop bar at the Westin Excelsior, an amazing 5 star hotel with an unbeatable view. 

After we spent a couple hours at the Westin we decided to walk around and get to know the city of Florence. As we walked around we came by a bar and there was a man in the middle of the street in a cowboy hat kicking a cab....obviously American. Turned out that tons of American study abroad students had just arrived in Florence so we hung around and chatted before turning it in for an early night. 

We all got up pretty late on Saturday and hit the sights around 12. We started at Galleria dell' Accademia, where one of Michelangelo's most famous works is located, The Statue of David. It was incredible, the detail was amazing and the sheer size was unreal. It housed tons of works from from various years and there was nothing separating you from touching a painting from the 1300s.  

After the Statue of David we went to the Duomo a massive Cathedral for a quick walk though and it was beautiful. We came out then went to the San Lorenzo Market, also known as the leather market. Florence by some is considered the leather capital of the world. After some more walking around we headed back to the hostel to get ready for the night. Jill found out about a welcome dinner from an organization that runs trips for study abroad students and it included all you can eat pasta dinner with "unlimited water, red and white wine." After the dinner the massive group of Americans went to Uncle Jimmy's Irish Pub for some more drinks before finally heading to Space Club Firenze to close out the night. 

Sunday we woke up around 10 checked out and headed to the train station. Every train from Florence to Milan was booked and we never made a reservation for our seat, so we decided to take a side trip to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa about a 40 minute train ride away. 

After Pisa it was a 4 hour train ride back to Milan, then an hour train ride to Riva. 

Nice, France next weekend.