Florence, Italy

*As always, all of the pictures from this trip are at the bottom! You can click on the first one to enlarge, and it will become a little slideshow of the pictures with captions that you can click through.

Florence, Italy

Tuesday, June 17

We woke up around 9:15am at our Rome AirBnb, both a little grumpy. We were absolutely exhausted from the day before, but the show must go on! We went to Monteforte 3 SRL for breakfast (which was conveniently on the corner of the alley where our apartment was) where we got croissants (one chocolate and the other a plain swirl pastry that looked like a mustache) and a coffee. It’s so interesting how different countries call different types of coffees by different names. In the London airport, the barista wasn’t able to make me a drip coffee, so he gave me a “cafe Americano” instead, and it was a glorious, decent-sized cup of coffee. Thinking this was what they called larger coffees, I tried to order a cafe Americano at this cafe, and the guy looked at me like I was crazy. I ended up just saying “coffee,” and he gave me a mini mug half filled with espresso…not quite what I was wanting, but oh well. 

After breakfast, we went back to our AirBnb, and I made another cup of espresso to get me through the day while sitting on our little balcony. Across the way were more apartments, one with a sweet little kitty. He was not present this morning, but all of the windows were open, and it was fun to catch glimpses of a local’s life. 

We packed up our things, ready for the next city (Florence!), and started making our way to the train station. In Rome, Jeffrey had tried to get some electric scooters to work through the app Lime, but it wouldn’t accept our identification- it just kept refreshing without making any progress. He decided to try again using the app Bird through our Uber identification credentials, and it worked! So instead of the 45-minute walk with our backpacks to the train station, we rented little stand-up scooters! This was my first time on anything like this, especially with such a large backpack, but thankfully it was easy to learn and so fun to ride on, even if the cobblestone streets made it a bit difficult. I ended up with a blister on my hand from gripping the handles so tightly! And yes, I did sing Why Not by Hilary Duff from the Lizzie McGuire movie (pretending I was on a Vespa…more to come with that in a future blog post), while zooming around the streets of Rome. It was such a fun memory. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of this since I was driving through the busy streets of Rome.

Once we got to the train station, we realized our train had a 2+ hour delay…so fun. We stood around, trying to find other trains that could get us from Rome to Firenze Santa Maria Novella in Florence, but nothing would work. There had been an issue at one of the previous stations on our rail line, so all trains on our line were affected- there was nothing we could do. So, we found a panini shop and got our lunch and waited.

After standing for longer than we would’ve liked and feeling like we’d wasted a good portion of the day, we finally boarded our train. We arrived at our seats to a family sitting in them. This was our first time evicting people from our seats, so it was a bit awkward and took longer than necessary because we became a bit wishy washy, not wanting to upset anyone even though we clearly had reserved tickets and they didn’t. A local reassured us that this happens all the time, which was comforting. A few minutes later, two new passengers, a son and father, evicted them from the seats they had moved to beside us! The rest of the ride was a stewardess trying to find them a seat and moving them from place to place because they had boarded without a ticket! It was quite the saga we watched unfold.

Our Global Pass allowed us to book first class seats at no extra charge, so we booked first class whenever we could! Most of the time they’d have a snack cart with crackers, a little sandwich, and normally coffee, which I definitely took advantage of on this ride. 

This was a high speed train, and we went around 150 mph. It also went through lots of tunnels, which made my ears pop frequently. Once we got moving, we shared our ham and cheese panini and Coke for lunch and enjoyed the Tuscan countryside. It was quite beautiful!

After about an hour and a half, we made it to Florence! We quickly figured out public transport (they used a cable car tram system), and we worked our way to our AirBnb. It was a spacious apartment about 15 minutes from the train station with a cute balcony. We settled in, rested for a short time, and then made our way into the city center to explore.

Our first stop was the Leonardo da Vinci museum which had wooden creations of his drawings and explanations of how his inventions worked. It was very hands-on and a unique experience. Unfortunately we learned that this museum was quite common across Europe and not as “special” as we thought it was. Nevertheless, it was cool.

We then walked further toward the center where we witnessed art students drawing historic buildings in the streets. In the city center, we walked around the Piazza del Duomo featuring the Florence Cathedral with its contrasting colors and marked geometric designs. It was quite grand! We also saw Giotto’s Campanile, the tower connected to the Cathedral.

We kept walking and made it to the Piazza della Repubblica, which featured a carousel! Jeff and I walked further past the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo to the Palazzo Vecchio (a palace!) and Loggia dei Lanzi located in the Piazza della Signoria.

After exploring the streets and “old buildings,” we walked along the Arno River toward the Piazzale Michelangelo, a large plaza overlooking the entire city of Florence. We hiked our way up the steps (and came across a Volkswagen van similar to ours!), and viewed the expansive overlook of the city of Florence. It was quite the breathtaking view! There was also a band along the steps playing music, and what did they start playing? Country Roads Take Me Home. I literally can’t make this stuff up. And what’s wild is that we heard it being played again later in (I think) France. Crazy.

At this point, we knew we wanted to come back for sunset, but we had a couple hours before that, so we decided to rent our little electric scooters and ride back down the hill and explore the city a bit more. We went along the other side of the river, through a park, and into some residential areas to get a feel of what local life was like. 

Near dusk, we started our way back up the hills to Piazzale Michelangelo. As we were going up the hill on our scooters, we passed a couple who were clearly struggling to find where to park their electric scooters they had rented (there were certain drop off areas for the scooters, but sometimes they were a bit hard to locate using their app). Jeff yelled to them, “It’s up here, just follow us,” so they did.

When we got to the scooter parking area, we quickly realized they were Americans. As you do on vacation when you recognize someone who sounds like you in a foreign country, I asked where they were from. And they said OHIO. Like, what?! We’re neighbors!

In talking with them further, we discovered our jobs our very similar, we got engaged in the same month, we got married in the same month, and we have similar names, Hannah and Anna. We walked over to the overlook and pushed our way through the people to find a spot for sunset. We took pictures of each other in front of the sunset and talked more. We really hit it off and enjoyed watching the sunset together!

Whenever we meet a couple traveling, we always want to get dinner together. While having a romantic date just the two of us is fun, we love the spontaneity of meeting someone new and sharing a meal, so when they said they hadn’t eaten dinner yet either, we were so excited to ride our scooters back into town and find a place to eat together.

It was about 9:45pm when we chose our restaurant near Palazzo Vecchio called Ristorante Braceria. Jeff and Hannah got a cheese tortellini dish, I got carbonara again (but with truffles this time!), and Brad got a pasta bolognese. This was one of Jeffrey’s favorite dishes of the entire trip.

We closed the restaurant down, talking to our new friends and learning about their life and their travels. We bonded over our faith, our “how we met” dating stories, and our love for travel. Hannah told us about an app she used to find flights with long layovers so they can explore other cities in the midst of a larger travel day. They also were in the middle of a big trip, bouncing across multiple countries, so we exchanged numbers and have stayed in touch sharing pictures of our travels.

Around 11:00pm, we made our way back to the tram to return to our apartment. We were cutting it a bit close, as the tram stops running at midnight, and we didn’t board until 11:30pm.

As the tram arrived, we quickly realized it was PACKED. (We would learn the next day that there was a fashion week in Florence and that there were many people in the city for that event making the public transportation much more crowded.) We pushed into the tram car and made our way back to our street before heading into our apartment for the night. The next day was going to be BUSY and we had successfully failed at going to bed early. While we would be tired the next morning, spending the evening with our new friends was one of our highlights of the entire trip.

**Click on the photos below to enlarge, and they will become clearer 🙂