Florence

We arrived in Florence around 9:00pmish (even though the ride only felt around 10 minutes long). I hopped in a cab immediately and went straight to Paige and Laura's apartment. I was so excited to see them!! There apartment is absolutely beautiful! The minute I got there I started getting ready and not even 15 minutes later we started celebrating Laura's birthday. The night was the perfect amount of home I needed. It was great seeing people like Genna and Steph out too. After a long pregame (SDT style- lots of yelling over each other) we headed to a bar that was down the street. It was very English speaking and I even found a shirt that said SDT on it. It was a very fun night and just the right amount of home I needed. To end it all me and Laura made pasta with pesto as a midnight snack- perfection.

The next morning I met up with the rest of the girls in the Republica square. We then headed towards the Duomo. It's one of the world's largest cathedrals and it is unlike any church I have ever seen before. It is actually colorful on the outside and so beautiful. The inside was plain but the outside made up for it. After looking around we climbed to the top of it, all 480 some stairs. Very Very exhausted we hung out at the top and saw a beautiful view of Florence. We could even see the leather market from the top (which is a good thing because that was our next stop). After catching our breaths we headed back down. Caroline's and my legs were both shaking. We needed some pizza for recovery.

After lunch we headed to the leather market. I ran into Laura and her parents there and I am so thankful for it! She took me to a place owned by a man named Massimo. Let me tell you he is the BEST salesman I know. He litterally was name dropping SDT girls like crazy and he was so so nice. I ended up buying real Italian leather coat!! Very excited about my purchase I went on the rest of the market and bought a little clutch as well. The market was exhausting but very cool to see. And I am VERY impressed with Beth and Rydberg for buying fancy new coats as well!! After the market we walked around some more and hit Pont Vechio. This a bridge that has a ton of jewlery shops down it. There were a ton of people around and again it was very overwhelming. We headed back to their hostel room very exhausted where we napped a littled. Then we ventured out to find dinner and found a great place in the Republicca where we could eat outside. I had gnochi with pesto and it was by far my second favorite dinner!! Then we walked around a little bit. Rydberg had told us about this amazing gelato place called Grom. We searched for it everywhere and right when we got there I realized that it was a chain and there is one next to my house in Paris. Regardless it was still delicious. Then they walked me back to Paige and Lauras. I went straight to sleep when I got there so exhausted from the past day.

The next morning I woke up early again and met my friends in the same spot. We went straight to the Galleries Accademia to see the statue of David. It was a bummer because we couldn't take any pictures because the statue was really cool in person. It was huge, 12 ft tall, and really intricit and beautiful. The rest of the museum was pretty lame so we headed out after that. Even though we couldn't take any pictures inside there are plenty of copies of the real thing around Florence so I got some good pictures of those. Then we went our seperate ways for a while and Caroline and I just laid in the sun. We were interupted by a musical, dancing, singing parade that came by...we still aren't sure exactly what it was. When we all met up again we tried to head over to the Boboli gardens, but lazy and not willing to pay we ended up just sitting outside of them. We talked and napped for a little and stopped in an internet cafe to just print out some boarding passes and little things like that. After that we all went back to Laura and Paiges, so everyone got to meet each other. I said good bye to them and thanked them for a GREAT weekend! Then we grabbed all our stuff and headed to the train station because now we are: Venice bound!!