Florence: An Amazing Taste of Tuscany

This has probably been one of the highlights of the trip. I think this post needs to be savoured like some of the wine we have had so far. Sip by sip, letting the rich flavour spread across your body and seep into your mind until you can't contain it any longer and have to let out your inner Mona Lisa. Here comes the poetic painting brush, so sit back and hopefully our description of the past two days will allow you to enjoy our experience of Florence as much as we have.

We arrive after a short and sweet train ride and check into our hotel which is conveniently located next to the train station. Unfortunately Heather booked the reservation for August 1st instead of the 9th and 10th, so we were lucky to get a room at a good price. No sleeping on the streets for us! Well worth it for the location, air conditioned climate, breakfast spread, and fact that our friends are staying at the same place. We dropped off our packs before we reunited with Heather's high school friends Alexandra and Stacey. They are also traveling with a great girl named Tamara, so we have expanded our posse to five Canadian girls who have traveled the world over. Alexandra has been doing an internship near Florence all summer so she was the perfect tour guide for the city. Her fluent Italian is an amazing bonus! Making reservations, grabbing taxis, talking to locals, deciphering the menus, and simply being able to bridge the language barrier we have is handier than Janelle's new Swiss Army knife.

We went on a whirlwind tour of Florence stopping into some of the amazing churches (with our shawls to cover our shoulders). We went into Santa Maria Novello, San Lorenzo, and Santa Croce where Galileo, Michelangelo, Rossino, Machiavelli, and Dante are buried. Intensely high ceilings, walls covered with what remains of vast paintings, and light that streams through beautiful stained glass walls. Truly breathtaking cathedrals.

We also stopped by the Duomo, walked across Ponte Vecchio, and admired the replica of Michelangelo's David that stands where the original once did (now inside Academia which had a line we did not want to wait in). We appeased our stomachs with fresh sandwiches and amazing gelato. What have we been eating until now?! Probably not a great idea to eat such delicious food as there is a chance we could turn into gelato snobs. Oh wait, that probably won't happen. We'll take just about any gelato you feed us! After touring several churches, and side stepping the pigeons and tourist groups, we caught up on each others' lives as the Italians would: over wine. After some of the house wine we caught cabs up to the best view of town. We stepped inside San Miniato Church which overlooks all of Florence, and were hypnotized by the sound of chanting monks. We sat and listened to their beautiful, deep voices and got lost in their faith and song.

We snapped some photos with the unbelievable backdrop before walking down to dinner. Delicious meals were shared between our group: seafood pasta, traditional soups, ZaZa's salad, white beans, and bruschetta. We couldn't even finish our salad, which is saying something! After dinner we walked to an international summer festival where we chatted with vendors and admired shiny things.

This morning we woke and devoured a great continental breakfast at the hotel. Scrambled eggs? YES PLEASE! Cereal, granola, yogurt, watermelon, coffee and croissants. Heck yes! We then headed off to catch our ride into the gorgeous Tuscan Valley. Our guide/employee for the day turned out to be quite the music junkie, supplying us with great hits from Blink 182 to LMFAO to entertain us on our journey. Rolling through the country side, he stopped multiple times to let us out for "peecture tyyyme" to capture some shots along the way. Unfortunately our pictures don't quite do it justice.

About an hour or so later we ended up at the ranch where we slipped on some riding shoes, slapped on our sunscreen and got directer towards our muscular stallions who were to sweep us off our feet and guide us around for the afternoon (sadly these were not hunky men like you may be thinking). Janelle was feeling a little anxious, as she has never really ridden a horse before, however, to her great relief she was given the grandmother of the bunch who was blind in one eye (24 years old). Heather, a more experienced rider, was introduced to her stud of a horse who was equivalent to the grandson of Janelle's (a 7 year old with a good deal of spunk). We then rode off into the Tuscan Valley with our horses and we vowed never to return. All you need is love, wine and great conversation right? Done. So, as we sit here in an abandoned house on the countryside (where we luckily scored some free wifi) we are debating whether we actually brought enough wine to enjoy each others' company for much longer. KIDDING - if we haven't gotten sick of one another thus far, we are in the clear.

The hour and a half horseback ride turned out to be quite relaxing as we marched in single file, with some occasional horse back kicks and potty breaks. We made it back in one piece minus our sore tushes. Thankfully they had wine waiting for us on our return. Following our departure from the ranch they brought us to rustic little square that housed a few restaurants and shops, enclosed by what looked like a castle wall. We enjoyed some great bruschetta, cheese, bread, olive oil and prosciutto, followed by some delicious Italian pastas of gnocchi with ground meat, and tomato spaghetti. All followed by panna cotta with wild berries for dessert and a wine tasting! Amazing and everything only for 110 Euro. We definitely recommend :)

We are now about to grab some pizza at one of Alexandra's favourite joints, also made famous by recent Jersey Shore season (fist pump!), then come back and strap on our dancing shoes and dresses for a night on the town. Supposedly we are going to Central Park where they have an outdoor club to rave about. As long as they have great music and a dancefloor, these girls are set!

As the internet here is quite slow, we will post some pictures tomorrow when we get to Roma. Ciao for now!