May 21st

We made it to Florence, last night!! Once getting off the train we were greeted with a nice consistent down pour of rain, in which we proceeded to walk through to get to our hostel. We finally arrived and it was an amazing place. A bar/ restaurant downstairs, a computer room. It felt just like a dorm, it the greatest sense. It was clean, it was open, it was niiiiiice.

We got to our room and after some exploring and rummaging around for food we settled into our room. Sloan and Jeff went to wifi whilst I stayed in the room to chill. Suddenly 2 guys walk in (it was an 8 person shared room) and instantly we get started talking. They were from New Zealand, the one on the left was Ken, and on the right was Luke! They we're so hilarious! Luke was 24 and he planned to travel around the world on and off until he was 28. LOL Ken asked lots of questions about America, and from what I gathered he/Luke and apparently most New Zealanders think Americans are all rednecks. I told him, thankfully I was from the North, and I don't say y'all. haha, this got everyone laughing. Eventually, everyone came back and we fell asleep.

Today was going to be a great day. We woke up and headed over to Katie's apt. On the way there we went through the leather market and she took us to the food market place where there was lots of fresh food and meats and cheeses and wine. AND AN ENTIRE COWS HEAD for sale. YIKES!


Afterwords we got a group together to tour some famous church. The inside was huge! The outside had a little garden, and it made it seem very cozy and then all of a sudden you get inside the church and BAM, gigantic! There were all these paintings on the walls, a lot of them were hard to see fully because the lights from above were glaring on them, but nevertheless, they we're intense. I would call them your typical church type paintings, people looking sad with lots of little cherubs floating around them and stuff. Jesus on a cross and all that. The architecture of the building was interesting to me. I wondered how long it was there, and how much it's survived, that's overwhelming!

Once we finished we got GELATO from GROM!!!! I can't remember what the name of the flavor I got was but it had waffles in it! WAFFLES! YUMM

Later that night, we met more people that were in Katie's program and we all went to dinner. Most of them were taking a cooking class and already knew so much about Italian food, it was impressive! Sloan and I shared 2 dishes. A spinach tortellini thing, and some pear pasta stuff. OMG! SO GOOD!!

After dinner we returned to the apt to meet the infamous Frank! SO AWESOME!  Frank.....Fran??LOL

Until tomorrow J,

-JEN



Remember:
- Gelato Tour of Italy
- THUNDER!!