Florence (Day 6)
Trip Start
Jun 17, 2011
1
7
17
Trip End
Jul 03, 2011
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Lynnette and I headed towards Piazza della Signoria to check out the statues before we meet for our walking tour. There was one of the many fake David's around Florence. We met up with the group and started our walking tour of Florence. We saw Ponte Vecchio and the Duomo. After the walking tour, the group split off.
Lynnette and I headed to find the bathroom and then head to the Duomo. Well these bathrooms were the most expensive so far, one euro, and you had to put the euro in like at a subway to get the gate to open up. Oh how I miss America where you can pee for free! After that we headed to the line for the Duomo which was extremely long. We got in line and then one at a time, snuck over to the gelato stand to grab "lunch". We waited in line for probably 45 minutes to an hour.
Once we got inside, we started the trek up the stairs, 463 up and 463 down. Oh my! A majority of the stairs were spiral stairs which was making me quite dizzy. There were parts of the journey that you were climbing up while people were climbing down. It was not really designed to let two people pass each other. While some people were trying to come down the stairs, they knocked Lynnette and she hit her head on the ceiling. Some people are so rude! Once we got to the top, the view was incredible. We stayed up there for a while, taking pictures. Finally we made the venture back down the stairs.
After the Duomo, Lynnette and I decided to head back to Leonardo's for puzzle rings. Once we were armed with our puzzle rings we ventured back to our hotel to get ready for our group photo, dinner and disco.
At 6pm, we meet up with the group in the hotel lobby and took the coach to Piazza Michelangelo. Piazza Michelangelo is gorgeous. It overlooks the city and you can see the Duomo and Ponte Vecchio in the background. We had a few minutes to take solo pictures at the square before our photographer showed up. It was extremely windy so it was hard to get good pictures but we managed.
After the group photo, we hopped back on the coach and headed to Montebuoni for our optional dinner. Montebuoni was located high up a hill with a road that is too hard for the coach to get up it. We had to take a shuttle van up the hill to the restaurant which took a few trips with all of us. We started out with Sangria on the balcony. After everyone made it up the hill, we sat down for dinner. There was another Contiki group there as well.
The meal was good. I had the vegetarian option again because our tour manager miscounted so there was an extra so I volunteered to take it. Eggplant parmesan again, but still delicious. Besides the main course, we had appetitizers, pasta and a stew. We were supposed to have coffee and cake but we'll get into that.
During dinner there was some excitement with a giant bug. It looked like a moth but it was the size of a baseball! It of course decided to land on the ceiling fan above our table and cause a panic by most of the girls at the table. Fabio, our driver, tried to get it away. It eventually flew away but everyone was worried about where it was.
They also decided to do a newleywed dance during the dinner because our group had a couple, Anna and Brad, on their honeymoon and the other group also had a couple on their honeymoon. They danced and were given a lock and key so they could partake in the tradition of locking their key on a bridge and throw the key into a body of water locking their love forever.
Dinner was running WAY behind schedule. It was 10 p.m. when the main course came out. We were supposed to be meeting the other members of the group that didn't attend dinner at Space Electronic Disco at 11. Since we were running so behind, we didn't get our cake and coffee which was disappointing since it was included in the price we paid for the dinner.
We didn't start leaving until 11 and it took a while for everyone to shuttle down the hill to the coach. It would take another 45 minutes to actually get to Space. A group of us decided to just skip Space since we wouldn't arrive until midnight and it was going to be another early wake up call tomorrow. Fabio drove us back to the hotel and we packed up our bags since we were leaving in the morning and went to bed.
