Duex Bagette: Day 8: Saturday June 11th

Today is our first day in Florence.

We decided that we should actually go into the town of Florence to do a little sight seeing. To start off, we took the bus into town. And of course…I fell asleep and my family forgot about me. Luckily a nice Italian lady decided that I should probably be woken up, so she told my mom and they finally woke me up.

Since it was pretty late in the day we got our first of many Italian pizzas. It was from this little pizzeria right outside this giant church. We didn't want to pay the cover charge to sit down so we took it to go and ate it on the side walk. It was more of a greasy pizza so my dad warned us not to get it on our clothes. Obviously he was the one to spill it all over the front of his shirt.

Then we decided to go inside the church..we waited in line and got to the front and as I was walking in the man stopped me and said that I needed to cover my shoulders and my knees. My mom didn't see me get stopped so she just kept going, unaware that her daughter couldn't even get in, but my brother and dad saw it and waited outside the church. So we had nothing to cover me up with and had no way of getting anything to do so. After a few minutes of watching a few other people get stopped and then sneak in we decided to do that. Kody was like "I'll cover you on 3. One. Two. Three. ALLEZ ALLEZ ALLEZ" But clearly it was much more stealthy.

Yes, so not cool to sneak into a church. But when I got inside I used my dads hat and our tourist book to cover my shoulders. And we didn't stay that long and avoided guards.

Clearly I never pay attention to cameras

Awkward statue pictures

My family

Next we decided to get more pizza so we let the boys find a nice little pizza place with a sit down area downstairs. It was the best pizza we've had so far on our entire trip(including future since I'm writing this a week behind) and the sitting area walls were covered in graffiti. It was super cool and one of the signatures was Jimi Hedrix's. Not a bad little shop.

More pizza

By the time I walked out of the restaurant, my dad had found him a vendor to haggle with about paintings. We only wanted one but came out with three. They just don't leave you alone. They will lower and lower and lower their price until you make a buy. After we bought those we walked by another one and that man asked what we got those for and then he tried to sell us MORE at a lower price. We didn't want 5 paintings so we tried to escape him but he followed us for quite awhile. Oh the life of a vendor.

Next we just walked the streets looking at clothing and postcards and doing a little bit of shopping, just enjoying the Florence ambiance. After shopping we were getting hungry so we had the brilliant idea of instead of going to one gelato place and getting 4 cones. We would go to 4 different places an get one at each to share. Well that was our plan until we started getting 2 at every one and trying EVERY flavor we could find. We ate so much gelato that day..but we weren't done…we had to hunt down a place that our tourist book recommended. But it was the BEST gelato we have had so far..so I'm glad we hunted it down. The shop had about 100 flavors too. Instead of just like 10.

Round 2

Passing of the gelato

Next to the gelato shop, while the boys were vino hunting, I found a nice little clothing shop that was decently priced and had clothes that fit me. So I did my trip shopping there. By then the boys were pooped and we decided to try and find our way back to the bus stop. Apparently on the way back, Kody and my dad saw Snooki from the Jersey Shore (their next season is filmed in Florence) but sadly they didn't get pictures..and they don't watch the show so they can't confirm it was her.

At the bus stop to go home, I personally saw a pretty funny scene. We saw a group of friends, 3 girls and 1 guy waiting for the bus. That's not funny in and of itself but the 3 girls were dressed almost identically. You just wouldn't see that in America. These girls had the same style skirt, with tights underneath, converse for shoes, 2 out of the three had white tops, 2 out 3 had matching purses and all three had the same sunglasses. It was just so different. In America, girls have their own style..we wouldn't be caught dead wearing the same outfit as our friend on purpose. So clearly I needed to creep and take photos.