Okay! So Italy post numero dos! Florence! Where to begin... Florence was so much fun. However, the beginning of our trip was not so awesome. Our time in Florence began with a crowded, very noisy train full of Italians. Our compartment was empty as first, but about halfway into the trip, a huge Italian family joined us, and one of them actually took Joe's seat (he was up going to the bathroom) and he actually ended up having to move somewhere else on the train. Once we arrived in Florence at about midnight or so, we were very disorientated and to make matters worse, it was raining, and pretty hard. So we began our trek to find our hostel, which we knew was just outside the city somewhere. Luckily I am an Eagle Scout and am always prepared, so I had the address and phone number of the hostel written down. We finally found a map at a bus station and after about 30 minutes of searching for our street, we found it, and realized we had a decent walk ahead of us. About 45 minutes later, soaking wet, we arrived at our hostel. Luckily a guy was waiting for us at the desk to let us in. Now, this hostel was the cheapest one in Florence, and would have been awesome in the summer, but it wasn't so awesome in March. We were sleeping in these canvas tent things (we did have beds), and had very inadequate means to keep ourselves warm. We were only provided one blanket, and I don't even think we had any sheets. Not so fun.
After a fairly miserable nights sleep in the cold, we awoke and prepared to explore the city. This is when the adventure began. We met Miriam while we were trying to figure out how to use the confusing lockers, and we were pleased to meet someone who spoke English. Miriam is 18 and from Florida, currently traveling around Europe. We noticed immediately how outgoing she was and how much she loved having company. Very cool girl. Immediately upon meeting her she asked us if we wanted to join her and the "Free Hugs" campaign. I had no idea what she was talking about until I remembered this youtube video I had watched a while back. I'll let you watch it for yourselves:
Apparently, the day we met Miriam was "International Free Hugs Day." Sounded pretty cool to us, so we figured we would join Miriam. Apparently all you do is hold a sign up that says "Free Hugs" and give hugs to anybody that wants one. Thats it! She planned on doing this in front of the main cathedral in Florence, where tons of people are all the time, so I figured something interesting would happen. After getting a tasty lunch with her and Joe, we went to the cathedral, but we couldn't find any other fellow "Free Huggers". (Doesn't it sound like some hippie thing from the 70's?) Miriam was disappointed, but realized she could do it all by herself. She whipped out her sign held it up, and after a few minutes, was having random people coming up to her giving her hugs! Pretty cool. This is when we met Abdu. Abdu is this awesome guy studying art in Florence. We found out he was a couchsurfer (check out the website for more info: couchsurfing.com) and that he was hosting a few fellow travelers at his place the next few days. Couchsurfing is an online network set up to save people just like us some cash. I wish we would have known about this before booking our hostels, because all it is is people all over the world offering their couches to people traveling through their city. It doesn't cost anything, unless you want to be generous and take your host our for dinner or drinks or something.
We decided that we wanted to split up for a bit, and this is when Joe and I went up to the top of the cathedral to catch an amazing view of the city. Once I find a way to upload my pictures, you will known what I'm talking about. All the views that I saw from the top of cathedrals in Italy were absolutely breathtaking, and well worth the 5-6 euros that they usually charge. After this, I wanted to go to the Ufitzi gallery, because I realized it might be hard to get in the next day, which was Easter. I learned that the gallery closed in abotu 45 minutes, but I wouldn't be able to get in the next day anyways, so it was either go in and rush around or don't go at all. Being really interested in famous art, I decided to go in. Obviously, art is not a good thing to rush, its something that should really be taken in and interpreted, but I didn't really have a choice. Boticelli and Da Vinci's works were amazing. You've probably seen this painting by Boticelli before:
It is amazing in person, let me say. Definitely a highlight of the trip. Obviously Italy has some of the greatest works of art in history, The birth of Venus, The Last Supper (which I actually didn't get to see in Milan), The Statue of David (which I didn't see in Florence, because I was told the replica outside looks exactly the same, so save myself the money and just pretend), The Sistine Chapel (I'll talk about that when I write about Rome next) and obviously tons more by the greats of Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael, Donatello (The Ninja Turtles!!!) Boticelli, etc. Absolutely fantastic art in Italy, if you appreciate it.
I did not have time to go to the famous Piti Palace in Florence, and this was the only major attraction that I feel like I missed in the city, but hey, I guess you can't see everything.
Later, when we met back up with Miriam and Abdu, we learned a very interesting thing about Mriam. She mentioned before that she could sing, but we didn't really have any idea how well she could sing, what her experience with singing was, or what kind of singing she was talking about. When we met her, she was wearing all black and a heavy metal band black sweatshirt. We figured maybe she was in a scream-0 band or something. She said she sang opera. Little did we know what we were in for. Next thing we know, she randomly walks up to the front of the main cathedral, and starts belting this beautiful opera tune! She sounded like a bird on a spring day, I mean I don't even know how to describe it... People started stopping right in their tracks to listen to her. A cop car even drove by, stopped, and rolled down the windows just to listen to her! The Italians were loving this and were completely eating it up. Soon, she had a crowd of 20, 30, 40, over 50 people! Abdu got a hat and started collecting little donations for her, and after about 20 minutes she had over 50 euros (75 bucks!) Isn't that crazy? Standing next to Miriam on those steps of the cathedral as the soft rain came down, watching all these mesmerized Italians was one of those moments for me. I just stopped and took it all in. It was like something from a movie. This kind of stuff doesn't happen!
We met some of Abdu's friends from his Art program, and one of them, Eduardo, we ended up staying with. (These couchsurfers are some of the most laid back, cool people we have met in Europe. I guess you have to be to let random people come sleep in your home!) We also met Becca, Laura (both from Canada) and Chris (an Aussie) at Abdu's place. They were the ones already couchsurfing at Abdu's. Such a great group of people, we had a lot of fun hanging out with them. There was also this hilarious French guy, Vincent who was so funny after he had a few glasses of wine in him. A tipsy outgoing frenchman can be entertainment for the whole night.
At the end of our second night in Florence, we ended up crashing at Abdu's (this was the night where Joe and I had to decide how we were going to share a twin bed together. It was either A) Man love, and spoon the whole night or B) sleep head to toe. We chose the latter, which led to a fairly uncomfortable night's sleep. ) This was after a long night of walking around to random bars and what not, and getting really really lost on the way home, (we were extremely tired, and none of us really caring about our sleeping situations). Lets just say we were so lost at one point, Joe laid down on the pavement and thought it might be a good place to sleep for the night. We trekked on and finally made it back to Abdu's place at about 5 or 6 in the morning where Joe and I got to sleep head to toe.
It rained for most of the next day, and we kind of just walked around and took it easy that day. We found a great little soup kitchen place to eat and get out of the rain, and this is where I randomly spotted our friend Patrick, a guy from our program back in Prague, out the window. Small world! Joe and I ran outside and said hello to him, and told him it would be fun to meet up with him later. We didn't actually think we would, but what would you know, later that night in some random bar we see Patrick once again. What are the odds of seeing someone like that twice in one day in a random city in Italy?!? I swear, sometimes it just feels like everything is planned out and something bigger is truly controlling everything...
For our last night, after a long and rainy day, we crashed at Eduardo's place, which was extremely comfortable. It was probably the most comfortable bed I've slept on since I've been in Europe, which was soooo refreshing. We were going to need a good rest before we were off to Rome.
So that is Florence. Good art, good people, great food, too much rain for a spring break, wayyy too much walking (at one point I thought I had honestly bruised my heels) and solid memories. Florence was the city where we got to experience more of the Italian culture, rather than just focus on running around to a bunch of different sights. We met a lot of good people who I had some great conversations with, and really just made the trip that much better.
However, I knew the greatest city in all of Italy still awaited, and I couldn't believe that we were only halfway done with our trip...we still had 5 days in Rome!
Coming soon...The Rome Blog! Check back soon! I think I am going to try to get it up tomorrow before my next adventure to Vienna and Budapest starts on Friday morning.
Ciao Ciao!
Steven is currently listening to: Rufus Wainwright, In-Flight Safety, Radiohead
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