So today was the first day of our free weekend! A few of us decided to stay in Rome and keep exploring the city. I, on the other hand (along with Chris, Dayna, and Andrew), decided to take full advantage of the opportunity and travel to Florence! We purchased our train tickets for 46 euro, it would have been around 90 but we opted for the slower train because it was cheaper and we thought it would give us a better chance to take in the scenery.
Our train left around 1 pm and we arrived in Florence just before 5. The one problem we encountered on the train was that we didn't realize we had to validate our tickets before hand. We would have had to pay 40 euro each because we failed to do this, but luckily the conductor let it slide and only made us pay 5 euro each. Another thing that happened on the train is that there were three different train stations in Florence so we had no idea which one to get off on. But thankfully, a woman was kind enough to help us out.
Once we got off the train, we walked around the city a bit and soon we were at our hostel, the Leonardo House! Its location was perfect; right in the middle of the city. After we got settled in we decided to explore the city a bit more. We walked around a corner and all of a sudden we stopped in our tracks; the Santa Maria del Fiore (Duomo) was right in front of us, and it was AMAZING! It honestly looked like it was fake. We had to walk up to it and touch it to convince ourselves that it was real. The architecture and the colors of the building were unbelievable. We came to the conclusion that it was made entirely of marble.
For dinner we decided to eat at L'Opera caffe, because of the fact that it was located right next to the Duomo. So we ate outside so we could soak it all in. All of our meals were delicious! I'm normally a pretty picky eater, but during the span of this trip I've tried so many new things. My favorite so far is gnocchi, which is a potato dumpling wrapped in a pasta type thing. With dinner, we all split a 40 euro bottle of wine and the funny thing is, it came with cheese puffs! It was hilarious!
After dinner we just keep exploring the city. We really wanted to see what the night life was like so we were in search or a bar or a night club. We ended up coming across a bar and we even made a few friends. Dayna and I got these delicious mixed drinks, while Chris and Andrew stuck with beer. After the bar we decided to find a night club with our two friends that we met. Once we got there, the nightclub ended up being closed so we just hung around in the street. I guess we were being a bit too loud because all of a sudden, someone dumped water on us! It was honestly exactly like something you'd see in a movie. So once that happened, we decided to return to our hostel to rest up for our big day of exlporing tomorrow.
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