Buona sera! What an adventure this has been so far. Such an experience for myself and the friends I have made on this trip. I’m looking forward to going home and seeing my loved ones, but I will desperately miss such a wonderful trip and spending time and having fun with the friends I’ve made. We’ve only got a few more days left, but a lot happening within them, so I am looking forward to them.
Today was a pretty cool experience. We started out with a mini food tour in a market, about a half hour away from our hotel. We tried a bunch of cheeses, meats, breads, and olives. The bread was so darn good, oh my gosh. I was obsessed. It was soft and salty and just delicious. We then split into two groups, one went to Gelateria Royale and the other went to Florence Leather. At the gelato store, we got to see how gelato gets made and sample a bunch of different flavors. It’s very easy and there is no milk in it which makes you wonder how it ends up so soft and smooth. All the flavors were amazing. Then we got a little bowl and picked 2 flavors and I ended up with chocolate and raspberry because I felt like they would compliment each other pretty well. D-E-L-I-S-H.
The leather factory was really cool cause we got a little lesson in marketing and being able to tell if leather is real or not. It was quite a scary place to be because you had a feeling you were gonna end up buying something or wanting something once you had the lesson in authentic leather. Well, I did at least. I ended up getting one for 200 euros after trying it on and it being too much, but loving it. I tried on 2 others and just didn’t like them like I did the first one and the owner/salesman said because we had such a big group, and he likes “to make all happy”, he offered the one I loved to me for 200 and I caved. I’m still trying to wipe away my guilt, hahaha. But I just keep telling myself that I may never get back there so why not?
The last thing we did in Florence before coming back to Rome was go into Santa Croce, the church where Machiavelli, Galileo, and Michelangelo are buried. There were actually women there cleaning the paintings, which had soot on them that built up from the candles that get lit everyday, so that was cool to see. Paul, our guide for the day again, gave us some really awesome information about it and pointed out things we may not have noticed. This was the one church I seemed to grasp and remember all the information from afterwards. We just went to so many different churches that they all run together.
After a brief lecture session in the Santa Croce, we headed back to our hotel and grabbed our things and went to get our train and head back to Rome. Once we got back it was a very chill night, to the point where I took a nap and it was great, and we all pretty much did our own thing until the Sisters had made pizza for us around 8, and then later on we played cards in the upstairs recreational room.
Tomorrow we go to a museum and we have our 4 hour food tour, which is gonna be bomb if the weather doesn’t rain, hahaha. Stay tuned for more!
I featured some photos below but if you’d like to see more, (I know you do so do it) go to my Flickr album linked here!
Abigail McNatt Photography 