Sarah's London Adventures: Italy Part 2, Florence

Florence
We got here Tuesday night and 2 guys from our program were also sayin at the same hostel and they had been here for a few day already so we went out to dinner with them and had some wine with dinner then they showed us around and we went to a nice wine bar at night.

Wednesday, Candice and I woke up and got an amazing pastrie then went to the uffitiZi gallery. The line took about an hour but it was totally worth it. I was telling her about some pairings while we were in there and we listened to some tours. It was an amazing gallery. After that we stopped for lunch at A panini place. We needed a break from pizza. We then went to the tower next to the duomo and climbed that. It was 414 stairs to the top, the view was amazing!! We took a ton of pictures. After that we went to the markets. There were all stands full of leather products. I was so torn if I should get a jacket or not, but I ended up not getting one, unfortunately! The best thing about Florence is there is this bridge and it is the jewleery bridge. All up and down the bridge there are expensive jewelry stores. At night the bridge just sparkles! For dinner that evening we wandered around and found this authentic cute family owned reatuarant. It was delicious food. I got this fancy pizza! And it was cheap too. Most places have a sitting fee in Florence so we have taken our lunches and sat outside but for dinner we look for places without the sitting fee.

Thursday, it was national women's day, and in Siena that means women get into museams for free! This was so exciting!
We went to the academia. After taking forever to find it because we walked past it 2 times and had no idea what it was because it is just a normal building from the outside. We got into that for free which is amazing because there is not much to see there but David! We saw David, and wow was that amazing. It is so impressive and we were blown away by how big it was. Something else interesting in there were the unfinished sculptures by michaelangelo! Those were cool to see the process of how he worked. In the academia, we ran into laken and her friends from Jmu she was in Florence with! It was great to see her and it was nice to get to talk to her! After that we got lunch, we were not too hungry ao we found this amazing place that had huge slices of pizza! It was awesome! We then got gelato! (first time that day). We then went to the palazzo piti, which is the Medici family's palace. This palace was right outside our hostel which was cool! Our hostel was in a great location! It was such a beautiful day, I was wearing a long sleeve shirt and a blazer and I didn't wear my jacket all day. The sun was shining and it was perfect! This palace had alot in it, some museams and an amazing garden. We went around the garden first because it was so nice out! This garden must have been about a mile. It had stairs everywhere, different walkways, hills, foundations, sculptures! It had amazing views of the city too! We walked around there for about an hour then went to the costume museam which was in the palace. It showed costumes (clothes) through time and how trends Changed and how that was effected by the time period. Candice and I loved it! They then showed the medici families clothing, or what they still had of it. After that we went to the art museaum in the palace, we didn't know who most of the people were in the sculptures or pantings but it gave us a chance to see the palace!! It was an amazing building!
After that we climbed up the piazzo michaelangelo where you can see the entire city. There we saw the 3rd David sculpture! There was a street performer up the hill so we sat on the stairs ate gelato and enjoyed the amazig city of Florence! It was a perfect setting! From there we walked around and saw the famous synagogue! It was really cool! After a nice dinner at a local pasta place we had an early night.

We got up early Friday morning to take the train to Siena!!