Finally found a moment to try out this blog thing, so I hope you all appreciate the effort. As I may have already told you, I ended up getting to my hostel at about 9pm. The taxi was easy enough to find and luckily I had written down the address because the driver didn't speak English. After a night of drinking prosecco (delicious sparkling white wine), some beer at an Irish pub, and then walking around the city I decided to go to bed and get an early start in the morning.
I woke up around 7:30 and had some surprisingly good free breakfast at my hostel. I then set out with one goal in mind, get lost. I succeeded quite efficiently at this and ended up walking around for about 5 hours. I saw a lot of amazing things, the Piazza del Duomo, Basilica di San Lorenzo, Opera di Sante Croce, and the Ponte Vecchio just to name a few. The town is mind blowing, everything is huge, old, and full of history.
The only place I actually decided to pay the money to tour was the Basilica de San Lorenzo which is a huge building that has a cathedral, Library, and treasure room/Museum. When I was buying the ticket I made the mistake of showing the "two" sign with my fingers as I was trying to communicate that i wanted to see both parts of the tour. Ended up buying two tickets to both things so it cost 12 euro instead of 6, lesson learned. The Basilica is the burial place of the Medici family as well as housing the coffin of Donatello. Some parts photography was allowed, others it was not. Unfortunately in the cathedral photography wasn't allowed, which is a bummer because it was pretty amazing.
After all my touring I sat outside a bar and had some wine with a really nice old man from Pennsylvania. I woke up the next morning with two main goals, buy a belt from the leather market, and find my apartment. I managed to accomplish the first task relatively easily, but got side tracked and ended up bartering with one of the leather market guys for about a half an hour. The bad news, I ended up buying a super nice jacket for 200 euro(thanks mom, it went on the grey credit card, we'll discuss if its a present or if I pay you back later lol). The good news, I bartered it down from 480 Euro so it was actually a great deal.
After my purchases I ran away from the leather market to avoid any other spending and found my way to the apartment. It looks nice enough, the picture above is of the door to my complex, its on one of the main roads which is nice. I decided to eat at the pizza place across from my apartment and by chance met a girl from USC who was on her last day of study abroad. She told me about all her favorite places in the city and her favorite day trips she took which was a ton of useful information. She also told me about this place called the Piazzale di Michelangelo which apparently has the best view of city which is where I will be going tonight, so expect some awesome pictures next post.
Anyways, much to see and much to do, the link below is to the facebook album from my first days in Firenze hope you like them.http://www.flickr.com/photos/50233644@N03/sets/72157623947544663/
~Alex
