travels | florence italy

ciao amici!

my favorite of all the cities we visited…firenze! florence was our 4th stop on our european adventure.

we stayed at hotel alessandra and the location was perfect! it is centrally located to anywhere you want to go in florence. our taxi driver recommended a few restaurant suggestions as did the hotel concierge but both places were closed. boo. we ended up eating at a cafe near the duomo before our visit to the accademia.

i would suggest booking all your tours and activities beforehand since you get to skip the ridiculously long lines. we booked most of our activities and tours through viator and ones that weren’t available there directly on the activity/tour sites.

when i saw the mona lisa in paris, i was underwhelmed since the painting was kinda small. so when i saw the statue of david, i was in awe. it literally took my breath away. i was astonished by the amazing details and how gigantic the statue was…this is a definitely must see if you’re in florence.

we were walking around looking for a restaurant for dinner and stumbled upon la grotta guelfa and it did not disappoint. i had the best pesto dish and panna cotta ever. good thing we didn’t stop by the empty pizza joint we saw because we were so hungry.

the next day we went to santa croce to check out michelangelo’s tomb and the leather school. florence is known for their leather so i definitely had to get a purse! the leather school didn’t have any styles i liked so we headed over to the san lorenzo market. we didn’t find much there either so we headed over to the main shopping area and there was a outdoor market set up in a plaza and found a purse i really liked. i handed over my credit card to the merchant and he said “it’z a no good” which caught me off guard since i only used credit card a few times in barcelona and paris and mostly used euros. i gave him another card to purchase the bag for €70 and went back to the hotel to use the internet to check on my credit card…and it was confirmed that my credit card number was stolen. the theft went on a spree in paris and london. they had maxed out my credit card within 2 days! i was lucky to find out while i was still in italy and the credit card company immediately closed my account and issued a new one along with an investigation. if i hadn’t tried to purchase a purse, i don’t think i would’ve found out about the credit card until i had gotten home from the trip. it was also a good thing that i brought along two credit cards and my “travel debit card”. my lowest credit limit card to use, an emergency credit card and i transfer money into my “travel” bank account. i didn’t let it ruin our stay so we went out and enjoyed a night of shopping, sight seeing and eating. =)

ponte vecchio
santa crocesan lorenzo marketthe statue of david…amazing!gelato on a stickdinner at my favorite florence restaurant, la grotta guelfai crave this pesto dish…SO GOOD!!!spicy spaghettiand the best panna cotta EVER

note: all of the photos were taken with a leica. =)

comments

your email is never published or shared. required fields are marked *

*

*

there was an error submitting your comment. please try again.

f a c e b o o k
n e w s l e t t e r