Florence day 1

We arrived in Florence and the amount of people here is staggering! We had to walk through the center of town from the train station to our hostel and that was no easy feat.( I am hoping since it is the weekend, that tomorrow won't be as bad, but I'm not holding my breath.)

I feel like the sun here is hotter and higher. It is never on the side of me like at home. Always above me, blinding. It's also not officially dark until about 10-10:30. It's insane!

We checked in to our new unique home for the next few days. We are staying at a campground that is considered a hostel. Our "tent" has a wood floor and there are beds. There is a metal gram around the tent and allows for a lock on a sliding door so we can lock up our things while we are gone. The bathrooms and showers are community and not far from our tent so not so bad. There is a small market and "restaurant" on the grounds as well. It makes for a very unique and interesting situation.

We then say to cool off and mapped out our must sees in Florence to make sure we hit everything bc there is A LOT! 

Since we are over the bridge from the actual center of town (cheaper!), and because it was already late afternoon, we decided to do the few things that were on this side of the river. 

We checked out Chiesa di Santo Spirito, the Piazza di Pitti, and the "botanical gardens". This cracked me up.

 1) there is no grass. It's all gravel and concrete. 

2) there was only one fountain that actually had water in it. 

3) there were no lush greens or colorful flowers. 

It was confusing and a lot of walking around like we were playing the game 'find the botanical garden'

One very cool cave like structure there I picture below. Drippy castles???! And also the statue of Neptune.

Gelato flavors of the day- Me passion fruit and blueberry.  Bill Green apple and black berry.

We found a very cute restaurant to eat in town last night called Osteria Vecchio Vicolo. The whole meal was so good! We decided to try dishes we knew to see how much better they were here. Bill had carbonara and I had rigatoni with meatballs in an amazing ricotta sauce. We split a bottle of Lambrusca and a basket of bread. I was so stuffed when we were done but would of totally had more if the brought it to me :)

After we walked all through Piazza Michelangelo and saw what was there before coming back to camp. 

The skyline of Florence was taken around 9 and you can see how light it still is. Will have to try again tomorrow night.