From Churches to Wine. And a naked man Statue.

After breakfast at the hotel (and now chugging water instead of drinking wine!), we started off our morning with a walking tour of the Piazza del’a Signoria, the Duomo and Santa Croce Cathethedral. Our tour guide was so informative and knew tons about the artwork, statues, and gorgeous Renaissance architecture. This is only a reconstruction of the famous David statue, but its the same size as the real dude, and is located in the Piazza. Florence is famous for its leather, so those of us who were interested headed to a little leather shop and learned a little bit about how it was made, in a short demonstration from one of the employees of the store. I bought some really cool leather jewelry there. We had the rest of the day to enjoy Florence on our own.

Some of my friends went to museums and galleries, but I decided to head out with a couple new friends and pick up a panini sandwich and gelato for lunch, and shopped a little bit around the city. There are a lot of mopeds in Florence, and we witnessed two near-accidents (by the same lady) within approximately 2 minutes! Good work, lady. It was pretty funny how uncoordinated she was on her moped. After our afternoon in the city was done, we went to the top of this gorgeous hill that over looks Florence and took a bunch of group photos of our Contiki travelers as the sun was setting over the city!

Soon after, we went to dinner. We entered the quaint little café restaurant and were immediately greeted with a choice of three drinks and little appetizers in the outside dining patio with fountains and gorgeous flowers. Once inside, we were offered unlimited wine and a four course meal spread over a couple of hours. We wined and dined and listened to the live music, including an amazing opera singer. I usually think opera is usually not my fav, but this lady was so talented! There was a dance floor at the restaurant, and we actually witnessed another proposal too! Europe is so romantic!

After dinner we headed out to Red Garter, which is this cool karaoke bar. There we meet up with a bunch of other Contiki travelers who were on the Road to Athens tour. We kicked it with them, flirted with Australians and Italians from the other Coach. I tried to speak Spanish to the Italians (again. Apparently I speak Spatalian) Basically just we partied until late into the night. We finally made it back to the hotel after another fantastic day of travel. I’m so stoked… Venice tomorrow!

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” - Maya Angelou