Day 20 – Florence

Due to our ‘wild’ night, everyone slept longer than usual, but I made sure that once everyone was ready, we were out the door and spend the day in the city. Our first stop on my infamous tour routes of Italian cities, was Sante Croce. The church includes the burial sites of people like Michelangelo and Galileo but unfortunately, included a ridiculous price to get in as well. Using google images, we were all able to experience what it looked like inside, and if we ever came back, we will make sure that it is visited. In the Piazza in front of the church, a ‘stadium’ was under construction for calcio storico – an ancient football game that originated here, and apparently gets very violent – but we would miss it as it was to take place in a week, and we would be further north by then.

Continuing on through the streets of Florence, we saw all major tourist attractions and famous shopping roads before arriving at the famous Duomo. Quite possibly being my favourite religious building in the world, I was adamant that I was getting into see it, despite the massive queue that hugged the exterior for nearly 3 quarters of the way around…and that all the girls were wearing their shorts, with nothing to cover their kneecaps. During our long wait, we saw a car of men accelerating towards all the street sellers with the aim of driving over all their paintings. Everyone was shouting and throwing hand gestures left, right and centre, giving you the gist that they weren’t allowed to be here. Sure enough, as the car drove off again, they relayed their paintings and continued normally, as if nothing happened.

Reaching the door of the Duomo, I had made sure my girlfriend packed her raincoat to wear as a long skirt when needed, so both her and I were allowed in. Unfortunately, the other girls weren’t allowed in and had to wait outside. Inside, I must admit, was not as pretty as the famous exterior, or maybe that was just my girlfriend getting in my head and repeatedly saying this the whole time. Nevertheless, we didn’t stay long so that we wouldn’t lose the girls.

Another thing I had planned for this area was to climb Giotto’s Campanile. For some reason, you couldn’t buy a ticket to just do this, nor to climb the Duomo dome. The only option was to buy a multi-ticket for €10 that allowed us to to climb both and see the baptistry too (which was getting refurbished). The tower was 414 steps and we climbed this first. Seeing Florence from the sky was breathtaking and we had actually forgotten that one of our friends had stayed on the ground, not opting to get a ticket and climb up – she went for a chocolate snack and a coffee.

When we climbed back down, instead of climbing the dome straight away, we went for lunch, and all of us got calzones in a snack shop off the main street. We had to wait a while to digest our food before climbing the dome though, as it was slightly taller with 463 steps. It took us ages to climb this because of the cramped conditions and steep stairs. Everyone had to follow the same staircase both up and down for most of it, and this caused havoc – no filter and go operations in place here – thankfully we reached the top and again was worth it. Although it was basically the same view, it looked entirely different and we got some American man to take pictures of us with the city behind us.

To reward ourselves, we all had an ice-cream and carried it whilst walking through more piazza’s and passing more sites of interest. The route took us to the Uffizi Gallery, one of the oldest and most famous art museums in the world. Of course, we couldn’t afford to go in here either but did sit under the tower for a while, under shelter until it stopped raining. We watched the street performers (the painted people that don’t move and the man who sits on the invisible platform) and saw behind the scenes of their acts. One man who was dressed as a golden angel, I think, took his break during the rain and stripped off his costume and left it by the street, on top of all the money he made. He is very trustworthy anyway!

The final stop was the Ponte Vecchio and we spent a long time looking at all the jewellery in the shops. That’s the problem when you take 4 girls to shops like this, they don’t want to leave. One thousand rings and necklaces later, and dozens of jokes about me proposing to my girlfriend, we left the buzzing city and went home for a nap (my route was that exciting that they couldn’t handle the pace of the day).

We woke up not long after, around 6.30pm, but I thought I remembered that the shop closed at 7pm and we had no groceries! I made everyone get ready in record time and we all walked quickly towards the shop. Although, my cleaner friend was coming back to the flat to get the rent money at 7pm, the girls had guaranteed that we would be back in time so we could all go to the shop too. It was now 6.50pm and had just arrived at the shop so I was doubtful… The good news was that the shop actually closed at 9pm, as I read the times for Sunday. Oops. So my girlfriend and her friend left to go back to the apartment and wait for the cleaner.

We finished shopping and getting what we needed, paid, left and walked back. As we were walking back, we noticed two girls in the distance that looked awfully familiar. Yes, you guessed it. They couldn’t even remember how to get back to the apartment and had now stopped at a bar and asked the locals. Again, you guessed it. They didn’t know any names of buildings or streets that it was on. They picked a route and went for it, only arriving 2 mins before we did. The cleaner was already in the flat waiting and he left quickly with the money – I was dying to give him a joke about going to get cleaning equipment but I thought that the humour might get lost in translation again.

That night, we enjoyed our dinner, some wine and talked about all the ‘good old days’ in school. We also planned what destination we were going to visit tomorrow (resulting in an early start at the train station). We went down to the hotel next door and asked in reception if they could book us a taxi (obviously it would be easier if they did it in Italian). They said they would just do it in the morning when we come down. Of course. We didn’t even think about that.

Then things escalated and before I knew it, some of the girls were feeling sick, falling asleep or spilling drinks all over the bed. I also remember playing some ‘sick’ beats through the speakers and before I knew it, we had all gotten in bed and were falling asleep. Nobody was packed and the flat was in a less than satisfactory condition. Tomorrow morning will be fun!