Florence + mosquitos = no sleep x 3.

Florence

That pretty much sums up our time in Florence. When we arrived, our host greeted us at the apartment. It was warm out and she had the windows open. Once we settled ourselves, we went looking for food, seeing as we skipped lunch. Unbeknownst to us, the Italians don’t start their aperitivo until around 6pm and they are pretty much closed until then, so trying to find food at 5pm was, well, just about impossible. Now, had we stayed in the tourist area of the city, this may not have been a problem, but we opted to stay in a residential neighborhood to get a more “local” feel, and well, we sure got it! Local Italian restaurants shut down after lunch and don’t open again until 7-ish.

Florence

We wandered the streets hoping we would find something. As we were walking by a park, some little kids started talking to us through a break in the bushes. They had converted a bench into their storefront, and were playing, “Sunday market.” As they were chatting away at us in Italian, Javier and I asked them if they spoke english or spanish. As were we talking with them, a woman and her child walked by and began translating for us. This is how we found out about their game. We all stood there talking to one another for a while, while the little kids just giggled. Javier asked the woman if she could recommend somewhere to eat, and it was then that we learned that everything was closed at that hour. She pointed us in the direction of decent, local food, and told us to go back around 7. Well, we had nothing to do, and we were determined to find something…anything. We ended up at a big market, Coop. So, Coop in Italy has a designated area for bread/ calzones/ pizza/ foccacia, etc. Lo and behold, Coop was turning out fresh hot pizza. A perfect snack to hold us over until dinner. So yes, my first food in Italy was pizza from Coop. Although, having now tasted pizza all over Italy, I can honestly say that it was pretty good, definitely not the worst, not by a long shot.

Ponte vecchio

After our snack, we snagged a reusable bag from the girls pushing Firenze Tupperware in front of the store, and made our way home. Now we had been in Italy for only a couple hours by this point, and we had already experienced a real life Italian dispute. On the bus from the train station to our apartment, two women were yelling at each other across the bus. Their hands were flying everywhere and they were LOUD. Now, I know the stereotype, but had never experienced it, and I try not to label people, but I have to say, they did not disappoint! I had navigated to the back of the overcrowded bus, while Javier was stuck in the middle- both in the bus and between these two hollering women. It was awesome.

At the appropriate hour, and after starting a load of laundry, we ventured back out onto the street to find some good food. We were given some recommendations by our host, so we decided to try one out. The place was very narrow, deep, and homey. At the entrance, there was a display of fresh vegetables that were arranged into some sort of art piece. As we walked into the restaurant, we passed by the deli area, as well as a a selection of freshly chopped veggies, where a worker was making salads and such. The place was very cozy, and without getting into too much detail, felt very Italian. The food was delicious. The pasta is made on the premises and was cooked al dente. It happened to be mushroom season while we were there, so I had some pasta that was covered in mushrooms, while Javier had papperdale with some sort of beef. Everything was absolutely perfect.

We rolled ourselves home and got ready for bed, which included closing the window- this is key. As we were getting ready for bed we noticed that there was a mosquito, so we chased it and killed it. We didn’t go to sleep right away. I was up reading, while Javier was on the computer planning some more of our trip. While this was going on, we were attacked by another mosquito…and another…and another. It turned into a mosquito killing night. There was no end to them. When we tried to go to sleep, we would lie there and BUZZZZZZZZ… right in our ears! Once it struck, we would turn on the lights and go hunting. We ended up killing about 8 mosquitos that night and didn’t get to sleep until around 4am. Needless to say, it was really difficult to get up the next morning. Javier had bites on his arms and I on my face. Yes, 5 bites on my face! Gross.

Florence Cathedral

After a late start from our war on pestilence, we had to run some travel errands, and walked to the city center. Now, the center was advertised as a 15 minute walk from our apartment. Even other people who stayed there claimed it was a leisurely 15 minute walk. They all lied. It was more like a leisurely 45 minute walk to the center of downtown. Now, it is probably a brisk 15 minute walk to the bridge that takes you into the downtown area, but to get to the actual city center would take an equally brisk 20 minutes or so. But we weren’t in a hurry and enjoyed our long walks along the water to and from the city. I felt like the walking dead as we made our way to the city center, so we stopped by a little cafe and had a 1 euro espresso! Now, I didn’t find the wine in Italy to be knock-your-socks-off amazing, and I don’t care for Chianti. But the coffee!!! Ho-ly moly! Best coffee ever, hands down! I knew I was going to be in trouble…

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David

After our errands, we purchased tickets, for the following day, to the Academia museum to see Michelangelo’s David, and made our way to the Florence Cathedral. Now this thing was impressive. Definitely one of the more impressive cathedrals we’ve seen so far. We then walked to the Ponte Vecchio bridge, which looks really cool from the side. It is a medieval stone bridge that still has shops built on it that hang over the sides. Once on the other side, we made the slow walk home, hiked to the top of a hill to take some pictures of the cathedral as the sun was setting, and fought off the mosquitos. After dinner, again at the same local place, we went home for another night of mosquito wars.

Ponte Vecchio

Same story… We decided these mosquitos must be leftover from the previous night, so we figured there would only be a few, and we would be able to sleep. Wrong. It was another night of no sleep and another 8 or so mosquitos dead. After more necessary coffee, we made our way to the Academia museum where we saw David. Now, normally when I see famous works of art,  landmarks, buildings, I think… well, there it is! I’m not one to gush over things, and things rarely exceed my expectations (I must set the bar really high). So when I saw David, I was surprised  as to how awestruck I was. He is absolutely gorgeous. I mean, flawless, perfect, and just…gorgeous. I couldn’t stop staring. I wanted so badly to

David

touch him, but from what I hear, that kind of thing is frowned upon. I had to wrench myself away. I could have stayed there for an indeterminate amount to time and just stood in awe of his beauty and greatness. Meanwhile, Javier is running around him snapping pictures like paparazzi, and now I think we have more pictures of David than anything else on our trip. 🙂 We talked about him for the rest of the day, both of us commenting on how magnificent he was. We built up quite an appetite at the museum and decided to have lunch at the central market, which seems to be pretty popular with locals and tourists alike.

The rest of the day was spent wandering through the city, stopping in a random churches, and taking lots of pictures. In the evening we tried a different restaurant for dinner, which was equally good, and prepared ourselves for our nightly battle. Now, night one, we explained the mosquitos by the open window. Night two, we rationalized that these mosquitos were leftover, and since we hadn’t opened a window since, we should be fine. Sure enough, night three, more mosquitos. We found the remote to

JandJ @ Florence Cathedral

the air conditioner, activated the swing and turned it on high. We were hoping the blowing air would be a deterrent for the mosquitos, since neither of us wanted to cover ourselves in deet again. No such luck. We slept a little better, and still had to use the deet, but we ended up killing about 5 mosquitos and achieved about 5 hours of sleep. Thank God we only had three nights there, if we had more, we would have moved. We rationalized two uncomfortable nights, but three…no more.

We were exhausted when we got on the train,

Leaning Tower of Pisa

and instead of going directly to Rome, we had decided to first make a pit stop in Pisa, which under normal circumstances would have been a great idea, but given our past three nights, sounded absolutely exhausting. We had planned to give ourselves two hours there to store our luggage, get to the leaning tower, take the obligatory pictures, and make our way back to the station in time for our train to Rome. Well, we did just that, with the exception of also eating some pretty terrible Italian food, and having to rush back to the station in order to make our train…but what else is new.

To see more pictures of Florence and the Tower of PIsa, click HERE.