Gauri's Adventures

Today was our first official day in Florence! We woke up and had breakfast at our hotel, Hotel Bocaccio. The croissant was good, but extremely sweet and the cereal tasted like cereal at home. After breakfast, Morgan and I went back to take a nap for an hour and woke up 10 minutes before we had to meet the others downstairs. We went down to the lobby to check out and meet Chiara. They had to get 2 taxis for us to fit all our luggage and all of us to take us to our apartments. When we reached our apartment, we were all SHOCKED! The view from our balcony… yes, balcony… is amazing. The top of the Duomo is visible and it is extraordinary. After we moved in and unpacked, we went exploring on our side of the Arno and found a cute place for lunch, where I ate like a rabbit and had another salad. The service was excellent and we all tried very hard to speak in Italian with our waiter who humored us and helped us out when we had questions on the menu. After lunch we met Chiara and Lara for our city tour. We started our tour in Piazza Santa Croce. The Santa Croce church is the largest Franciscan church in the world. We went inside and saw the funeral monuments and tombs of important Florentines. I really like our tour guide because she speaks English very well and also is really knowledgable about Florence, and Italy. After Santa Croce, we kept walking and saw the Uffizi gallery from the outside and also we saw the Duomo and its Baptistery. People used to have to be baptized before going into the Duomo. After the Duomo we continued walking and saw the “fake” David statue by Michaelangelo. The real statue is at L’Accademia but there is a replica at Piazza della Republica. After our tour ended, I had my first gelato!! I tried limon first and it was delicious. It tasted like lemon sorbet only a million times better. We were all pretty tired after the walking tour so we just came back to our side of the Arno and went to the grocery store. It is actually really difficult to shop in an Italian grocery store but I think it helped my vocabulary by looking at things and learning what they were in Italian. I am very glad I was able to find foods I liked though! I bought cheese and bread for grilled cheese, apples, celery, romano cheese (which tastes amazing!), potato chips (just like home!) and Special K cereal. We were pretty tired after the grocery so we came home, made dinner and were going to go to bed but we decided to walk to the internet café near the Ponte Vecchio. The PV is the oldest bridge in Florence and was the only one not destroyed by the Germans during WWII. There are 45 stores on the Ponte Vecchio, and 43 are gold/jewelery stores. I probably won’t be shopping there but maybe when Mom and Dad comes, we’ll go shopping on Ponte Vecchio too, just like so many come to Florence to do!