Saturday, October 12, 2013 @ 6:58 PM in 2013 Europe
Day 108
Last night everyone stayed up pretty late talking, eating snacks and drinking the free wine produced by the hostel owner's grandpa. It's really nice to be in a small hostel full of fellow travelers instead of giant groups of people.
I didn't set an alarm this morning and got up around 9am, ate and then hung out at the hostel for a while. The forecast was calling for rain all day which is why I wasn't really in a hurry. When it looked like it wasn't actually going to rain I went out and started to walk around Florence.
Florence itself is pretty big but most of the big sights are within the old city walls and within easy walking distance. The closer I got to the Piazza del Duomo, the more and more people were out. By the time I got there it was basically wall to wall tourists everywhere. I walked around the leather markets where there were more massive amounts of people, then headed over to the Ponte Vecchio (the famous old bridge) and again, tons and tons of people.
It was a big mix of huge tour groups, people randomly stopping or changing direction in front of you, people trying to get photos across extremely busy walkways, street vendors trying to sell you stuff, mopeds and bicyclists flying all over the place and police and other random vehicles making their way through the streets.
I was thinking about getting a leather jacket here since Florence is supposed to be famous for its leather work but all of the stalls in the leather market had the same stuff and the stores just seemed to be filled with pushy sales people. If I had a better idea of what I was looking for it might have been easier but instead I didn't want to deal with the mess.
In order to avoid some of the crowds I walked up a big hill overlooking the city called the Piazza Michelangelo. It had some great views of Florence so I hung out there for a little while before heading down. On the way down I ran into one of the guys from the hostel who told me about a really good gelato place up the street. Since I hadn't had any gelato in Italy yet I decided to go get some.
I had some kind of dark sesame flavor and another flavor named after their establishment. I ate the gelato by the river then plowed my way back through the crowds to get to the grocery and then back to the hostel.
I answered some emails and read a little while before making dinner. A few new people showed up at the hostel so tonight I'm sure we'll have another good wine time.
The weather tomorrow is supposed to be really nice but I really don't want to deal with more tour groups and clogged up streets so I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet.
Teaser photos:
Tags: daily journal, italy, florence
Posted from: Italy