Florence

Our hostel in Florence, Emerald Fields, was only a short walk from the train station. It is a nice hostel, small rooms, we actually paid 5 euro extra per night for a private room, ahhh luxury! The staff are very friendly and are happy to make us real italian coffee, which is very nice. The kitchen is a bit of a bummer, they have ovens and stoves, but no permit, so we aren't supposed to use them.

We arrived and dumped our bags in our room before heading off again, on the train to Pisa for a few hours. We headed straight to the leaning tower, which was quite fun. It was not as tall or wide as I had expected, but was a lot prettier than I had imagined. We spent a bit of time watching other people take stupid photos, before taking some of our own. As for the rest of Pisa, there really is not much to see or do, and there were a lot of seedy looking people around the town, glad that we wont be here for the night.

Back on the train, all on our eurorail pass, we were planning on heading down to Sienna for dinner, but decided in the end that it would be too much of a rush, the last train back to Florence was only going to be at 9pm. By chance Christine got chatting to a nice girl from Finland, Natalie, at the train station. She was looking for a hostel, so we showed her ours, which she liked, and we ended up having dinner and gelato altogether.

Our first morning we had set the alarm and planned to head down to the Uffizi Gallery early. When the alarm went off however, we both rolled over and went back to sleep, which was very nice. What it meant, was that even though we were at the gallery by 10am, we had to wait for 2 hours to get inside, funnily enough I think the extra sleep was worth it. The gallery was amazing, so many paintings and sculptures, all 500-700 years old. Many of the greats were there, Michangelo, Leonardo, Raphelle... It was almost too much as by the end they all looked a bit the same, and we were getting very tired after standing for so long. On the way home we grabbed some food and a bottle of red wine and made our own bruschetta. It was funny as two other Australian girls were doing exactly the same, so we ate with them.

Sunday morning we actually got up when the alarm went off, and headed to the Academy Gallery, which is where Michangelo's 'David' is kept. This sculpture was amazing, its like 10m high. I learnt that it is the David from David and Goliath, its probably common knowledge, but it had never occurred to me. The rest of the gallery was a bit similar to the Uffizi but with a lot more Michangelo works. We spent a few hours here before seeing the Basilica di SS Annunziata, a church which is quite beautiful, and was actually having a mass.

In the afternoon we had a rest at the hostel, its been hot here, mid 30s, which is nice but also draining. We then headed down to the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge and shopping area for a bit of sightseeing, shopping and gelato. Florence is pretty much exactly what I expected from Italian cities. Lots of old buildings, churches, galleries and crowds. It is nice without being spectacular. We have enjoyed our time, but the crowds in the galleries has been a bit disappointing.

Our last day in Florence was a Monday, which meant that a lot of the galleries and attractions were closed, which didn't worry us as we had seen enough. We spent the day just exploring the city. We looked at a few markets, christine bought a belt and damien some sunglasses, also some food for lunch. We walked over to a big garden, Giardino di Boboli, which was you had to pay for, so we sat in a small park nearby. We then continued up the hill to Piazzale Michaelangelo which had great views over the city. There was also a storm approaching so we saw a lot of lightening off in the distance.

By the time we arrived back in town the storm had arrive, although it wasn't too bad, just a bit of rain. At first it was nice and cool, but quickly got a bit muggy! We had a look inside Piazza S Marco, the biggest church in town. It was not a glamourous as some that we had seen, but did have an amazing painted dome roof.

Our last night we went out for pizza and gelato, before tidying up our room. We are looking forward to about a week with friends from Melb, Ben and Steph.