Firenze (The Final Field Trip)

Yesterday was our last group field trip. It's kind of hard to believe I probably won't be in an Autogrill for a long time (For those of you who don't know, Autogrill is the Italian equivalent of gas station mini marts ON CRACK). Our first stop in Florence was to The Academia, the art museum where Michelangelo's "David" is kept. The museum is pretty small, but David is MASSIVE and impressive. Our tour guide made a joke that all the girls in the group looked enamored and said something like, "It all looks good now, but will be gone later" referring to David's perfectly chiseled body. The Academia also housed a bunch of other cool art, but was very, very crowded and difficult to move around, so I was happy when it was time for lunch.

The famous Piazza della Repubblica

After lunch our next scheduled activity was a walking tour of Florence. For those of you who don't know and haven't read my other blog about Florence (shame!), the city has excellent shopping and high fashion. So a lot of people in our group, especially those who weren't staying the weekend in Florence decided to ditch the tour (which was sure to be too long, too hot, and not interesting enough) and shop instead. Michelle and I struggled with the idea, but in the end decided to at least start the tour and if we passed by a shop we just could not resist, we would taper off. Well, it was about five minutes in when we ducked into a caffe to grab a bottle of water, when we walked out the group was gone and we could not find them anywhere. We were both wearing our "whisper units"--little radio devices we use on tours so everyone can hear our guides--so we tried to find the group based on our guide's voice coming in and out. We spent a good ten minutes tracking them before we decided to look for the group in the Florence H&M.

In our defense, shopping is a great way to have a cultural experience. I learned how Italian registers and fitting rooms operate (slowlyyyy) and that people have absolutely no regard for personal space. Normally, if you run into someone in America you apologize profusely, but in Europe I'm pretty sure they do it on purpose.

High fashion and luxury cars in Florence, reminded me of home

I also finally got an authentic Italian leather bag--something I have been dreaming of since my last visit to this wonderful city, and I also had excellent gelato...drip all over me as we ran to our meeting place.

The Florence Duomo, so impressive

As you can tell, Florence is beautiful, and is the only city we've visited here that I can see myself returning to long-term. My love for it is not easily expressed in words.

On another note, the Jersey Shore wrapped filming up a little while ago, so Michelle, Tiffany, and I are officially the only Orvieto kids who got to see them! This only makes me super excited because everyone else desperately wanted to run into them too.

This is our last week in Orvieto! It's kind of hard to believe, but I'm also kind of ready to move on to the next part of our adventure and go back to the USA. This week is paper writing galore, a cooking class, and hopefully some fun hidden in between! Stay tuned!