Hostel Santa Monaca Florence

Last night we got into Florence around 10:30 p.m., and had to navigate ourselves around in order to locate our hostel. Lets just say that we had to do a lot of back tracking, and that italian instructions are not always the clearest. Luckily, once we got on the right track, our hostel was a cinch to find. Yesterday we spent our last, rainy, day in Cinque Terre. We visited a lovely little seaside town called Porto Venere. It took us quite a while to get there (by bus and train), and after walk...

Yesterday we meet our group on the ponte alle grazie for our wine tour at 10:30 a..m. There were 5 other people on the tour with us, which was a nice size group. We all jumped in the 9 passenger van, and drove into Tuscany. The rain stayed away for most of the day, and the weather was mild- perfect for visiting quaint wineries, and seeing the tuscan countryside. Our first winery was the Costello del Trebbio, a castle that was built in the 12th century, and amazingly is still standing. It now ...

Yesterday morning we got up very early, on account of our roommate (luckily she checked out yesterday so we got a good night of sleep last night), and went to the Uffizi gallery for our early reservation. Even at 8 a.m. there was a line up to get in, so I was happy that we had prebooked. It is a massive museum, with endless rooms filled with portraits, and sculptures. The Uffizi is definetly worth a visit, and the paintings from Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and Botecilli were my favourites for obv...

So we hitched a train this afternoon to Florence. So far we have only seen in it at night cause we got here at like 8pm. We showered, put back on our dirty clothes, and headed out for dinner. So guy offered us dinner and wine for 10 euros so we went with that. they also let us bring in our own wine which we bought for 2.50 at the corner store. seems like a lot of fashion stuff so far. where we ate was pretty cool. it was outside with an open square. Cant believe ive been in venice and florenc...

I arrived in Florence yesterday at lunch, leaving dirty but lovely Rome behind. I quickly realised tht florence was much smaller and instantly felt more at home here. Florence looks Italian. I'm not sure what that means, but it looks like an italian city should according to my imaganings.
I walked around for about 4 hours in the afternoon, and managed to walk a full circle round the city with 2 stops to museums! Florence is small indeed, was my conclusion!

Today i started walking a...

Today is my birthday!!! I'm now 24 years old and I'm in Florence, Italy and I should be ecstatic right? Right, it was a great birthday. Started with more rain in Riva and it followed us until we reached Florence. The sights in Florence are well documented and just like 3 weeks ago in Roma we run into the hordes of tourists again, but it's Florence, what can you do. I was blown away by the Duomo (it was essentially the only sight seeing that took place today) but it is by far well-advertised a...

So as last night's poem mentioned, I felt like I was overlooking something important on my birthday -- and today I found out what I did and it's something I'll always regret. Today was museum day. Checking out the Uffizi Gallery and also the museum with the Statue of David (which was phenomenal seeing in person). However I noticed a lot young people (Italians and tourist) walking around with Muse (one of my fav bands) t-shirts and thought that was odd. Well it was a delightful day of sightsee...

Today was about healing. I wasn't in the brightest of moods last night but decided that today was going to be a better day, and it was. The main agenda for today was to not have an agenda, to just wander. Wander the streets, the shops, the things we've already seen, the things we haven't. It was very low key, lots of sitting, eating and people watching, which is just what I needed. Also, this evening was the night in which we hiked up to Piazzale Michelangelo to see the incredible views of th...