Day 20: Part 1

Buongiorno!

Today is our last day in Florence so we're all pretty sad but excited to move on to Rome.

I woke up and got out of bed at 9am and went to The Diner for breakfast again. I got the same thing and again, it was amazing. After that I left the restaurant and took a long way home, resulting in me discovering a huge antique market just a few blocks away from the apartment. So I basically ran home to wake up Katia and make her go with me. When I got in it was silent. Everyone but Katia and Geoff had gone to breakfast with me then left to go shopping. So I woke the both of them up; Geoff stayed in to wait for his clothes to be done washing but Katia and I left.

Our first stop was at Dolce Lab down the street. Katia got coffee and I got a raspberry chocolate cupcake (it was scrumptious). Next we went back to the antique market I stumbled upon and realized that it goes on forever. It was so cool. So so so cool. There were books, clothes, jewelry, furniture, and lots of knick knacks. Ahhh I loved it. We walked through the majority of it and made our way over to the San Lorenzo area. We went back to The Club House to get some much needed ribollita and water. It was so good. I'm sorry, but it was better than Mario's. When we left The Club House we walked down the street and sat on a stoop until a local young Italian man approached us in a nice blue jacket. Just kidding it was Geoff. He thinks that jacket makes him impenetrable to hawkers.

The three of us went into our favorite gelato place, La Boteghi di Leonardo. The man who owns it is named Francesco, "like the pope!" He's so nice and we're going to miss him. And the gelato. I will never forget his gelato. After we got our tummies full we left and Geoff separated from us to draw the church of San Lorenzo. Katia and I then embarked on our journey for stamps and a post box to send out postcards.

We spotted a tabacchi (a tobacco shop) from across Pizza di San Giovanni and went in to get stamps. They're very expensive. Then the guy handed Katia a map of the particular boxes we could put our postcards in with these stamps. So we walked out, put the stamps on, and started walking toward the back of the cathedral to find a box. We couldn't find any but there were apparently a whole bunch around us. We were kind of baffled until about 15 minutes past and I said, "Hey, what if they're INSIDE stores?" So we looked at the map more closely and found out that there were store names on it. One of which was the tabacchi where we bought the stamps. So we went back in there (after circling the entire cathedral) and asked one of the men where the nearest box was. He walked about 3 feet and pointed at one of these boxes. We felt dumb but also annoyed because no one told us when we got the stamps in there. But when we left I just started cracking up.

After that little unnecessary adventure we walked back home, through the antique market again. We got home and I told my mom I had wanted to get her something but didn't know what. She told me what she wanted so Krista and I left the apartment for me to return to the antique market yet again. Then we walked by Santa Croce on our way home. It was kind of sad. We got in, I showered, and now we're throwing away stuff and packing and getting ready for our Capa farewell dinner. Remember my extravagant post about the welcome dinner? I'll hopefully have just as much to write about for this farewell dinner.

Part 2 coming soon!