Florence, Firenze, whatever you want to call it

(train from pisa to genova, enroute to Nice, 3:30, tuesday 19th)



Hey everyone,



Hopefully if i'm sending this out, i also had a chance to send out the pictures we took from florence - wow, what a beautiful city and area in general. We did however run into a bit of a road block with stuff to do that was going to interest us, but that's ok, we just kinda relaxed and took advantage of our incredibly cool, air conditioned room as well as our view from said room.



We arrived at like 12:30 two days ago, so we really got a chance to see a lot of Florence or Firenze or however you want to call it, on the first day. Our hotel, not a hostel, was literally 3 minutes away from the station which was nice, and we got right in, dropped our stuff off, and headed out. We first just walked around down some streets to the Duomo - what a beautiful church. In fact, I would say that it is more beautiful on the outside than on the inside - it's (by others we have seen's standards) very plain inside actually with a few interesting notable items: 1) the big clock on the back wall, 2) the sundial, which you can't see, because it only lights up one little area on the 20th of june or something like that?, 3) the neat "shadowed" tilework on the floor. I think I took a picture of all that. Oh hey, in case you've forgotten, the link for the pictures is http://www.flickr.com/photos/98781425@N00 Just thought I'd let you know again. After seeing the Duomo, and seeing the really long line to get into said duomo, we decided to come back the next day, a plan, which unlike the vatican museums's, actually worked. But on to the rest of the first day: We walked around until we found the Uffizi, an art museum so huge it would have taken years to see everything in it - so actually, in an effort to get our buck's worth, we're still there, and have been there for a past couple of days, and I've only recently found some wireless to send this to you. Ha ha... just kidding - we saw the "highlights" that our guidebooks told us to check out, and we were pretty satisfied. I can't remember exactly what we saw, but everything was really old, really cool looking and just in general, um, cool, for lack of a better working dictionary in my head. Some of the statues and paintings there had been there since 1200! Anyway, after that, we went to this really old bridge, the name of which escapes me, but it is lined by gold and jewelry stores the entire way. Ladies, have no fear, I picked up a couple gold necklaces and earrings for all of you, just remind me next time I see you. That night, we decided that it was time for a real, authentic, italian dinner, which was fantastic, which simon treated me to for my birthday, which made it extra nice. We sat outside on the street underneath big umbrellas, and it was just really nice. Simon had stewed wild boar, while I had swordfish - both were really good. That night, we wanted to take a walk, which turned into us getting a bit lost, but we found some cool little digital map outside some hotel which guided us back to our hotel in no time flat. We also saw a really neat mcdonalds - in the pictures you will see that it's the one with the black walls, cool colored lights, and the golden arches on a sign on the left - most chic mcdonalds I've ever seen. The next day, we got up at 8, had some breakfast at a little cafe - an espresso and a breakfast item of some sort... kinda like a danish I guess, and headed out to the duomo. On our way there, we stopped in a book store which happened to have an international section, where simon picked up 2 more english books to read on the trip. Great find, because he was really dying to get into some more books, as he had polished off 4 already. The duomo, which I already mentioned, was pretty plain inside, but great to see, and was massive. The outside pictures are a bit more stunning so you should check them out (assuming they're posted when you're reading this). Our next and final official stop in florence was "the big giant hill at the south east corner of florence across the river" - obviously I have no idea what it was actually called, but I think it was near Michelangelo piazza or something like that. One of the copies of Michaelangelo's (sp?) David is up there - it's the copper one, the stone one is somewhere else - we saw that too. Up there, we took some of the most amazing photos yet - stunning shots of the city, and the surrounding mountains. We also got some gelato, which was very good - but be forewarned - should you arrive a place of gelato sales where the tiramisu gelato is fresh and has it's chocolate powder exposed, do not, I repeat, DO NOT attempt to inhale the powder - it makes you cough like you're dying. Simon was just about ready to hit me with the heimlach maneuver when I told him I was ok, and had just gotten a little chocolate powder in my lungs. I'm fine now, if you were wondering, it just took me a couple of minutes to stop coughing and drink a lot of water. So, that pretty much ends our formal trip to florence - later that night we went to a grocery, got some loafs of hard crusty bread (fantastic) and some fresh made pesto and some chocolate, and went to town on that for dinner - we had been eating a lot here and there for lunch, so that was enough to satiate our hunger. We used the internet and such from one of the dozens of internet points, and headed back for a good night's sleep before our trek to Nice today - 8 hours I might add. We're about halfway through, maybe a little more, and the air conditioning seems to be working a bit better than it was before - really stuffy in this car! Anyway, we're staying 3 nights in Nice and 2 in Paris before we take the Chunnel to London for another 2 nights, then fly to Dublin for another 3 nights. Then we're back in the states (er, canada). Quickly on the topic of canada, we ran into some germans on some sort of class trip on a bus to rome from our campsite. One of them looked at the canadian tags on our packs and said to simon "ahh, I love your country!" - we're like, um... "Ohhh, right, you love canada" to ourselves. We didn't have the guts to tell them we were american and have them tell us they didn't like our country so much anymore. Anyway, I think most people like the united states and its citizens, but just aren't pleased with the united states government and such. Anyway, on that note I'm going to go see if they have any Labatt Blue on this train... Arrivedeci Italy, Bonjour France!



Matt, from a slightly cooler than it was earlier train from Pisa to Genova, enroute to Nice.


Edit: oops, no internet connection to my machine yet, so no pictures from florence, but soon