Firenze Part 2

Saturday:
Saturday morning we got up and had the terrible free breakfast at the hotel. It was essentially some rolls of bread and terrible coffee. Then we walked to l'Accademia to see the David and the rest of the paintings inside. The musuem was really cool, showing off half finished sculptures by Michelangelo in the hallway leading to the David and a ton of medieval tempura paintings. After we saw that we decided to walk around Florence and explore a bit. We walked just a few short blocks and saw Firenze's il Duomo which was just gorgeous! The line was fairly long to climb to the top of the dome, but we decided to do it anyways. It had these super small spiraling stairs going almost all the way to the top. A lot of the girls got dizzy and claustrophobic while we were going up, but I thought it was fun. The stairs right at the top were super steep and actually curved out so it was steepest right at the middle. Very strange. The view from the top was absolutely fantastic. You could see all of Firenze laid out before you. After that we were waiting for the boys to go up through the Duomo and we got some gelato. That was an interesting mistake. The gelato place was set up so you got your gelato outside and then paid inside and they had no prices anywhere. So I got a waffle cone because those are my favorite back home and I was craving one. The kid piled ice cream onto it ridiculously high and then told me to inside where they told me it was 15 euro! Ridiculous! Every other place I saw waffle cones they were 7 euro at the absolute max not 15. We found little tourists traps like that all over Firenze which is weird because we haven't found that in Roma at all. But I ate that entire stupid ice cream because there was no way I was going to let it go to waste. Luckily it was quite good, but definitely not worth 15 euro. After that we went down to the Piazza where the David originally stood which was quite beautiful. We wanted to go to the Uffizi at that point but the line was about 3 hours long so instead we went inside il Palazzo Vecchio, an old Medici residence. That was super cool, the paintings on the ceilings in every room were very detailed depictions of ancient Roman/Greek gods to exemplify the divine right of the Medici family.   After that we went up with the boys and walked across Ponte Vecchio, the bridge filled with gold and jewelry sellers. The jewelry was gorgeous, but priced insanely high. Then we walked around Florence shopping for a new birthday dress for Katie since we essentially celebrated her birthday all weekend long.
After that we met up back up with everybody and we went and had a delicious dinner. I had Spaghetti Pomodoro which is awesome with fresh tomatoes. Then we all went back to our hotel and got changed to go out to a club that night. Once we were all dressed up and ready we went to the area around the Duomo to figure out where to go for a club called "Space". While we were wandering around the piazza looking for it we ran into a young American couple who were looking for the exact same club and they were from Portland! What a small world Firenze is. Once we figured out where the club was we walked there and went inside. It was the first club I had ever been in and it was an interesting experience. It was loud and crazy and packed with people (mostly guys, very few girls). First we went to the bar and they gave us all a free shot of peach schnapps for being first timers at the club. Disgusting. I still can't stand the taste of hard alcohol so I didn't drink any more after that even though we were all supposed to get a free drink by paying the cover charge. Then we decided to all go dance and the guys swarmed on us like leeches. It was ridiculous. I had one really sweet Spanish kid come and ask me to dance. That was an interesting experience because he spoke very little english and very little Italian. He was from Madrid and only spoke spanish. I thought that I still remembered some, but clearly after attempting to talk to him in spanish it was a complete fail. He did manage to tell that he was "professional dancer in Madrid" which he definitely didn't dance like it, but he told me I was a good dancer after he tried to "teach" me how to dance. It was a very strange dance, but did involve spinning me around a lot which I did enjoy. After that us girls went to go find the rest of our group who had somehow managed to find a group of people from Washington that are in the army and just happened to be on leave in Firenze, Italy right now. Crazy! They were all nice, but a little on the older side for my taste. They were all hitting on us along with the five billion italian guys crowding our little area, but they were also willing to help us get away from the Italian guys which was nice. One italian guy who was a little older and rather unattractive asked me to dance and when I said no we ended up sitting and chatting for a while, him speaking in English to me and I spoke Italian back to him which was fun. Then after a while he grabbed my hand and dragged me on to the dance floor. I really was not into dancing with him he was way too touchy feely, but at least he wasn't a groper which was good. We danced for a while and then one of the girls came and grabbed me and told me we were headed home so I walked back with them to the hotel and we went to bed.

Sunday:
Sunday morning I was planning on getting up early and going to the Uffizi right when it opened, but I was so exhausted from getting home so late from the club that I didn't manage to get myself out of bed when my alarm went off. So instead we all slept in and checked out of our hotel and then went to go spend the day in Firenze until our train at 5. We went to a small bar cafe for breakfast where we had amazing pastries and fresh squeezed blood orange juice. Absolutely amazing. Then we were planning on walking down to the Uffizi to check out the line but we got distracted by the leather market we found on the way there. We weren't planning on spending a long time there, but we ended up spending a couple hours just wandering around. At one point I accidentally got separated from the group (the market was like a maze) and ended up just walking around randomly looking at stuff when I saw somebody I knew.

Now let me give some background on this person. Last summer my mom, my sister and I came to Italy for my graduation present and we came to Firenze. While in Firenze we came to this same leather market, wandered around and checked out all of the leather jackets. At one point we ended up going into a store where the owner, a man named Paolo, was super sweet and totally had the hots for my mom. We bought jackets from him and he gave us gigantic discounts on them and then he just stood and chatted with us for a good hour. Right as we were about to leave he asked if he could take us all out to dinner that night at a local restaurant. We said yes, met up with him for dinner that night at a restaurant called ZaZa (the same one I went to Friday night actually) and had a great time hanging out with him and talking about Italy and the culture and everything. His english is flawless because he went to NYU for college. At the end of the night though we all said goodbye to him and never thought we'd see him again.
Well I was walking down the line of leather shops when I saw him sitting in a chair in one of the stalls. It totally surprised me but I went in and asked if he remembered my mom, my sister and I. It took him a few minutes (apparently he was really hungover), but his assistant remembered me and then he started to remember too. I ended up standing and talking to him for an hour about Italy and school and life and everything. He totally remembered Stephanie and how smart she was and how pretty my mom was. He was actually upset at first because I hadn't come the day before to say hi. He said because I came the day I was leaving he couldn't show me good "Italian hospitality" like he normally would and said next time I come to Venice I have to go see him first. Very funny. Finally I told him I had to go find my friends and he gave me his business card and told me if I get into any trouble at all to call him and he'll come help me. He was very sweet. After that I went and found my friends (who had bought beautiful leather jackets while I was gone) and we shopped around a little bit more before deciding to walk to la Basilica di Santa Croce and get gelato on the way at a place Rick Steves (the travel guy) reccommended because they have rice gelato. That was weird. It tasted like tapioca pudding. Definitely not as good as the gelato here in Roma. After that we wanted to go inside the Basilica but you had to pay to go in and we felt that on a Sunday you shouldn't have to pay to go inside a church. So instead we walked along the river, taking funny pictures, got more gelato and then went back to the hotel to grab our bags and go to the train station. The train ride was really long again and we were all exhausted by the time we got home. We all loved Firenze but we were happy to be home last night in Roma.