FLORENCE DAY 1

Today was interesting. We got to Florence and we were headed to our hotel when it started to rain. We couldn’t believe it… but it wasn’t as bad this time. We got to the hotel Bellettini and for some reason they took us to their sister hotel “Hotel Nizza’. We found out later that some kids from Penn State were supposed to stay in Hotel Nizza or something like that but because the were there five weeks before us they moved to the Bellittini… and they weren’t going to make them move because they only had 3 days left. To make a long story short we are basically paying for their “nicer” rooms while we stay in a hostel type situation. Looooots of fun…

On a happier note, Florence Is beautiful and its really easy to navigate because everything leads back to the Duomo and the Medici Chapel, so it’s almost impossible to get lost really.

After we had a little time to get settled Darrin gave us a little bit of time to go shopping in the markets and have something to eat before we met up with our tour guide. Me and some of the girls went to a little sit down restaurant and had our selves some lunch to hopefully give us some energy before our tour. The food wasnt very good but the decorations were really cute which made it kind of fun.
This thing was huge... we loved it (for decoration purposes of course)...

At about 2 pm our group met up with our tour guide Tonya for a tour of Florence. She took us to see the Brancacci Chapel, The Pontivecchi, The Arno River, and so much more. All of it was meant as a quick overview of Florence.

I don’t know if it was because I am so tired but it was really hard to concentrate and we weren’t able to take very many pictures so I don’t really remember much about the tour. Sorry everyone. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little bit better once I have had some good rest.

After our tour we went to a small gelateria called Grom. I had a lemon granite (kind of like an Icee) and it was probably the best thing I have tasted while in Europe to date. Beccah, Whitney, and I went shopping after for a little while (ps I found crunchy M&Ms... I was ecstatic because i dont think we have them in the states anymore)


and ate some interesting tasting pizza. I think they put hot sauce on it and let’s just say it wasn’t my favorite. The Potatoe Pizza was ok though. Well it’s getting late and I am getting annoyed with the Penn Kids (we are sharing an internet area), so I’m going to cut this session short. Hope everything is going great at home. See ya in a bit.