Buon Giorno Italia!

The night train was a fun experience, and I did get a little sleep, although not the 7 hours I was hoping for. My alarm went off at 5:00 a.m., and then it was a wait to use the restroom and to get freshened up. We arrived in Milan and caught another train to Florence. We ate our breakfast on the second train which consisted of yummy French tarts that Jennifer had purchased for us and leftovers from our dinner.

We arrived in Milan around 9:00 and dropped our suitcases off at the hotel. The buses are not allowed into the city, so we said goodbye to our bus driver until the morning and started walking toward the center of Florence. The Italians call Florence Firenze. Apparently Florence is an obsolete name although the rest of the world still calls it that. Firenze is the capital of Tuscany and it is a darling little city.

Our first stop on our walk was a leather making company called Leonardo's where we learned how leather boxes were made and how to tell real leather from fake leather. I even bought myself a cute little orange purse at a price I would never spend in the U.S., but what can I say? I'm in Italy!

After the leather shop was a walking tour of the city with Martina, a local guide. We walked to the different sites in the city and she shared a lot of history with us. It makes me realize how little I know about European history. Their history is much longer than ours and I get confused with the all of the characters in the story.

There were lots of statues all over the city in different piazzas. I saw a replica of the statue of David in the Piazza della Signoria along with many other original statues. The original David was in the piazza until it was moved to one of the museums. We also saw a very old bridge. The oldest in Florence about 700 years, and the Duomo which is also about the same age and is comprised of a cathedral, a bapstistry and a bell tower. With it's high domed roof and it's unique to the region marble, it was a site to see.

Lunch was at a local cafeteria that had many traditional Italian food. I had tortellini, caprese salad, and bruschetta. I also tasted some of Jennifer's lasagna which was very rich with a creamy sauce instead of a tomato sauce. After lunch we were on our own, so we walked through the narow streets doing a little site-seeing, shopping, and of course eating some gellato.

We were supposed to go on an afternoon trip to Pisa, but because not enough signed up for it, the trip was cancelled. In some ways this worked out, because we were able to walk back to the hotel, take showers, and rest for a few hours before dinner. Dinner was a little later than normal back near the statue of David. After dinner, we walked through the streets a bit more, but most of the shops were closed up. We stopped at a market and bought some limonecello that Jennifer had told us about. It is a lemon liquor that tastes like a lemon drop.

It's almost 10:30, and once again we will be up early and on the road tomorrow. It will be about a three hour trip to Assisi for lunch and some site-seeing and then another three hours to our last stop, Rome. Yikes! I still have to get my Paris postcards in the mail!