New Cities Old Friends
Since my last blog post we have traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark Interlaken, Switzerland and the next trip which I’ll talk about in this post: Florence, Italy. As opposed to spontaneously planning our trip to France the week of, my friends and I had been planning on traveling to Florence for a while because one of our good friends is studying abroad there for the semester. We wanted to catch up with him and have him show us around his city after living there for 2 months and getting acclimated.
We all flew into Florence early Friday morning because we couldn’t afford to miss another one of our late Thursday classes with all the trips we have planned in the coming months. A huge plus of visiting friends in other cities is saving money on staying in an Airbnb or Hostel because you can crash at their place for free if they have an extra couch or air mattress. We walked around the city the first day hitting all the hot spots like the famous central market filled with different vendors of Italian cuisine, then we walked through the leather market where some of us bought watches, wristbands or wallets all made of leather. After that we had to visit the touristy spots of the city like the Statue of David and the Duomo which ended up being more fun than we expected. The next day we booked a wine tasting tour in Tuscany where we traveled to two different wineries in the Chianti region and tasted their famous red wines. The next day we left early in the morning and went on a day trip to Venice by train. In Venice we went on a Gondola ride throughout the famous canals and walked all around the city.
I always try to end off my posts with a little bit of advice for future study abroad kids, so for this post I would say that when you travel to a city you shouldn’t feel forced to stay just within the limits of that specific city. Europe is so accessible to travel anywhere on a train or bus so explore other parts of the country your visiting if you can find the necessary transportation. We technically visiting Florence for the weekend but also hit Tuscany and Venice to round out our weekend trip to Italy. This weekend we’re heading to Dublin, Ireland for St. Patty’s Day!