{day 19 - Florence}

This morning I woke up in Florence! I thought Rome was beautiful but Florence is beau-ti-ful!!


We woke up early to go to the Italian leather market, which was really cool. I got a leather money clip/wallet for my beau, a cute little strawberry keychain for me and a pink ostrich skin eyeglass holder for my mom. Some things were very expensive but I feel like I made it out of there with some bargains.

There were alot of sidewalk artists recreating famous works of art on the street with just chalk! So cool!

When we finished shopping around the leather market we did a little souvenir shopping (where I found a perfect Italy charm for my charm bracelet – the Coliseum) and then went to buy tickets to see Michelangelo’s David statue. We sat in a nearby gelateria and had granitas until it was time for our “tour” to see the David.

Being able to see David was incredible! He is a very large statue – his feet and hands seem a little too big for his body and his eyes are wild looking. The David is different from most marble statues because he has a lot of veining and isn’t the typical creamy white color but more of a bluish-grey white. When we left the museum we were ready for dinner so we went to one of the many local restaurants.

I had the most delicious ricotta ravioli (there was a tomato cut into the shape of a rose on my plate!) and we all enjoyed complimentary limoncello from our waiter! Limoncello is a lemon liqueur from Southern Italy, made of lemon rinds, alcohol, water and sugar. It is very sweet and not at all sour because it is made without any actual lemon juice. I didn’t particularly care for it because it has the consistency of cough syrup and I didn’t like the taste, but it was very nice of our waiter to share some with us! After dinner we went back to our hostel because we had to wake up early for our flight “home” to London.