Day two of Florence, starting out bright and early at 8AM to go to the Academia to oggle at David and his glorious buttocks. No, but in all seriousness... oh wait, that is what I did this morning. Spent the morning at the academia learning more about Michelangelo and his four other incomplete statues, as well as learning more about David and the various misfortunes he fell upon while outside. I found it particularly amusing how they tried so hard, in WWII, to protect him. Way to care about your art pieces (but obviously, thank god for that because you should protect your art).
Then at 9:30AM we met up with the rest of the tour group for the included walking tour of the city of Florence where we learned about the overhead bridges the Medici's employed, we walked along the river, and then winded up in various squares and outside the government building with it's statue of neptune. Of course - how could I forget, we saw the Duomo (which... wow, that was impressive), as well as found the lucky (but fake) board statue. The end of our walking tour bought us to the store of this famous leather manufacturer (don't remember the name, sorry!), but no one in my family was actually interested in any of the things (we were told we would be taught about how it was made and stuff, but what a lie) and so we ran off to get some lunch before we had to meet up with our tour group again at 1:15 to head to San Gimignano. Like I said, Italy is riddled with small little cosy sandwich shops that sell dirt cheap sandwiches and so that's what we got, a bag of sandwiches and then we sat on some benches and at them.
After lunch, we headed to a restaurant that apparently made amazing hot chocolate - and it was amazing, but super expensive. I also got some ice cream there, while my brother got an average tasting cheesecake and my sister and parents got some tiramisu and some sort of tart. The last two things were absolutely huge and to be honest, I had quite some difficulty eating my ice cream and hot chocolate - mostly because the hot chocolate was very legit melted chocolate, very thick, but delicious. And as I said, expensive. It was a nice place to sit and stay warm though. Florence wasn't cold, but not what I would call warm. Eventually 1:00 rolled by and we trooped out, stopping at a nice little stationary/post card store before meeting with our tour group to the quaint little medieval town of San Gimignano - another UNESCO world heritage site.
If Assisi was a post-card picturesque medieval town from storybooks, then I don't even know what you would call San Gimignano - something out of a fairytale perhaps? When we arrived the sky started spitting at us a bit, but no real rain (thank god) and we were greeted to a gorgeous view of rolling fields and greenery, and all this while were standing in this small town of cobblestone and rock. Fairytale town I'm telling you. There were no churches, no walking tour, we were just let free to roam for about 2 hours and so me and my sister went of on our own, while my parents went of on their own, and my brother - and avid skateboarder who did not bring his skateboard - who had been feeling very restless went running and climbing around god knows where.
To be honest, despite having 2 hours, me and my sister did not get very far beyond walking down one street. This is because we stopped at almost every possible place you could stop at. Our first stop was a nice little post card store with hand-drawn postcards (I assume). Many of them had a pinocchio theme, but those ones weren't as interesting as the ones inside. We particularly liked a series of cats which had been drawn to resemble certain human figures. My sister bought a couple, and then we moved on and found ourselves in a leather store where we found a wallet that we contemplated buying as a Christmas present for our grandmother that wasn't too expensive. We stalled, and then moved on, but eventually came back to buy the gift. Then, because there was no tour group dinner planned, we decided to just buy food for dinner in this town. My sister bought bread, some salami, as well as olive oil. Then as we continued walking back down to where our bus was, we bumped in to our parents and found another leather store where we found some very nice leather wallets and interesting coin bags. The coin bags were particularly cheap (5 euros?) and shaped in a square with folded triangle flaps on each side, so you could open it any way you wanted. I think my mom also bought one. After that, we headed to the bus and the supermarket where the bus was at to pick up some olives and clementines. My sister also bought a gigantic Panatone (Italian Christmas Cake) for about 3 euroes.
I realised later that I should have paid more attention to what my sister was buying, and should have taken more in to account that she was buying for five people, because sadly - she did not buy enough. We got back to the hotel at 6PM and among 5 people, 4 who do eat quite a bit for dinner, a loaf of bread and one piece of salami was clearly no sufficient. It was quite an amusing sight to see though. Me, my brother, mom and dad huddled around a desk in my parents hotel room ripping up pieces of bread and crudely slicing up a piece of salami like we were a ridiculously poor farming family from hundreds of years ago. Nibbling at olives along the way and fighting over who got to eat the last clementine.
I wasn't exactly full from that, and my brother ended up running off to get another sandwich. When he went out, my sister followed him, and I just stayed in the hotel room catching up on things online as well as trying to download some movies (How to Train Your Dragon 1 and 2) so that we could amuse ourselves later tonight. The internet in our hotel was quite strange as it only worked if we sat near the door and so that's where I said, torrenting and wondering when my siblings would come back. I had thought they would only be gone for no more than an hour, but they ended up disappearing for two almost two and a half. Fine for me. During that time I showered, chatted with friends on skype. I had been planning to clean my underwear by hand in the bathroom (my mom provided us with a clothesline and pins to dry our clothes) but it didn't end up happening.
My siblings came back. My brother began washing his clothes, I joined him with mine (our bathtub turned quite a disgusting colour of gray and left a very visible dirt line after). I should talk about our weird Italian bathtub. It was shaped regularly, but only covered with half a sheet of glass, and the shower head was... for whatever reasons, right in the middle of the bathtub - lengthwise. So imagine, a tub, and what is stopping the water from coming out is only half a piece of glass that winds up being quite ineffective because it only covers half the bathtub and the nozzle is also in the center. Where are you supposed to stand to avoid water from flooding the floor? The answer is nowhere. Not only that but they happened to stick the mirror in a very awkward position so you could visibly watch yourself showering (in fact you pretty much had to because there was no where else to look). Now, I'm not sure if it's a normal thing, or if people enjoy seeing themselves shower but... I don't know, it felt a bit odd.
But anyway. So siblings back, clothes washed (or some of it, not all), and then we settled down to watch How to Train Your Dragon and fall asleep. The next day was a bit of a later day (weren't leaving until 9:30) and I was looking very forward to being able to sleep in, just for a bit!
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