Day 1: Part 3

After my last blog post, Dr. Zaho came to our apartment with the rest of the group. We all walked together over to CAPA, our the headquarters of our educational companions in Florence. The girls in the other apartment were having bad luck with getting their wifi, so we sat around and read a local newspaper while they caught up with the internet. The building it's in was built in the 16th century by a good friend of Lorenzo de Medici; the specific section it's in was the servants' quarters of the palace. I'll update this post later with pictures because the internet is being real slow right now.

After we left CAPA, we decided to kill time before dinner by going grocery shopping. It was weird and interesting because there was Disney stuff everywhere and Come On Eileen was playing and we just didn't know what to buy, really. I pretty much just got snack bars for our long days, bananas, and tortellini for a night in, plus a few toiletries. We dropped our items off at our respective apartments then me and my roommates walked with Zaho over to the other apartment. Their place has a bigger, more impressive entrance, interesting items strewn about (an antique chair, a religious tapestry), more bathrooms (one of which is in the pantry) and decorative ceilings.

From there we walked past Santa Croce, through the Uffizi, over to Palazzo Vecchio, then down to Santa Maria del Fiore. It was all so much to take in in such a small window of time, but everything was breathtaking. In a one hour span I saw murals, frescoes, sculptures, statues, and places of high importance to the Italian Renaissance. It was so surreal and mind-blowing. Again, I'll update this post with pictures when the internet stops acting up.

For dinner we ate at Yellow Bar, a good restaurant around the corner from Santa Maria del Fiore. I consumed an entire 10" pizza with eggplant and zucchini on top. It was the thinnest pizza I had ever seen, but I was proud of myself. Afterwards we all went and got gelato. I had mousse chocolate and a chocolate chip flavor. So good. We then walked back to Santa Croce and split up from there.

It's about 9:30pm here right now, but I can't express my excitement to take a shower and go to sleep. I can't believe that I'll be waking up in Florence, Italy tomorrow morning!!