We made it! Buongiorno!

Picture: Just a block away from our hotel! :) The Duomo!

I'm blogging in Italy! Woot! I think what I'm going to do is post my blog entries as I get a chance to write them and add pictures once we get home.

We arrived in Italy yesterday around 8am local time. It was a pretty smooth flight, though I didn't sleep very much. As always, if it's a moving vehicle and he's not driving, Scott's sleeping.

On very minimal sleep, we managed to figure out the Italian Rail system and not get robbed and not kill one another! Woohoo! The 2 semesters of college Italian are not coming back as quickly as I'd hoped...mi dispiace. (That means 'I'm sorry', and this is a key example where only knowing like 5 phrases kind of makes you sound like a doofus 9 times out of 10. Eh well.) Luckily, most Italians will speak English to you. I usually approach them with a very American Buongiorno! and they answer me in English. All good.

Our Hotel in Florence is called Vivahotel Laurus al Duomo and it's really nice! We have a view of the Duomo from our window too, (insert dreamy sigh).

Scott and I, inspired by what little of Florence we got to see from the train station to our hotel and some super-human burst of energy, went BACK out and hiked 416 steps up the Giomo's tower which is adjacent to the Duomo and got a great view of the city. It was really tight, I'd guess no more than 2 feet at some points so we got pretty up close and personal with some random tourists!
The Duomo from the front w/ the tower we climbed to the side.
View from almost the top...


View from the top :)

The way down was the hardest part, it was really steep and super crowded.

We also explored the city a lot on foot. I think from what I've seen so far, Firenze is a city where following directions is a dream... it's more about observing landmarks and keeping oriented. Streets are not well marked and oh yeah, Italians like to just barrel into you and plow you over without any acknowledgment or 'scuzi'. I've never experienced this before. Like you know when you're walking on a sidewalk and someone is coming in the opposite direction you get over to one side and they do too? Nope, not in Italy (well, at least not so far). So, I'm okay with it if they are!

We had a pretty good dinner at a place called Lorenzo di Medici Pizzeria. It was obv marketed to tourists bc the menu had English on it. All advice and restaurant recs I've gotten so far have said 'go off the beaten path, the less English, the more authentic and better the food.' We will, just not on 3 hours of sleep. That was a promise we made. And there was vino and it was bennissimo.

We got a good night's sleep too, which was pretty key. A long day but a great one!