After missing our train to Lecce, we were all pretty bummed about not being able to go to “the Florence of the south.” Gabe was especially upset because Lecce is where his dad was born. We boarded the train to Florence at 9:30, and arrived at 12:30. We got off the train, and I immediately called Debbie, in the girls group, to see which hostel they were staying at. Besides the obvious problem of wasting money on train reservations and buying new train tix, we didn’t have a hostel booked for that night either. they were staying at some hostel near the train station, and Debbie told me it was nice. I followed Rachel’s directions from the train station towards the hostel just long enough to get us completely lost. Adam took over, and after circling a few more times, we eventually made it to the train station. Luckily, they had rooms available. We split up three and four, with Seffi, Seth and I taking the three. The hostel was nice as the girls said, nothing super fancy but not bad. There was a computer in each room with super slow internet, which was nice. It also had free wi-fi throughout. We put our stuff down and went to find some lunch. Of course, we ended up at another pizza place! As expected, the pizza was very tasty and overpriced. After pizza and gelato for dessert, Adam and Gabe, still in chronic depression from missing Lecce, went back to the hostel to chill out. the five of us went for a walk.
We started at the Duomo. The duomo was beautiful and huge, but was closed due to mass. That was a familiar story. We then made our way to the David statue. The David was unbelievably breathtaking. After admiring the statue for a long time, and seeing the rest of the statues, Seth came over to me and said, “Josh, there’s a musical instrument section! Have you seen it?” I almost full-on sprinted to find it. I walked in and was greeted by a huge, 14th, century harpsichord. ‘So THAT’S what a harpsichord looks like,’ I thought to myself. It was pretty small, but stil amazing. There were a few super old cellos, violas, violins, horns, trumpets, trombones, drums, clarinets, serpents, flutes and pianos on display as well. Also, there was a real Stradivarius violin on display! Mr. Brame, my band director from high school, talked all about these ultra-rare and expensive violins during music theory class. It was a fantastic experience at the museum.
After, we made our way back to the Duomo, a church that took 140 years to build! According to Ricky, it is the 3rd largest church in the world! Next to the Duomo was a Ben and Jerry’s store. I freaked out a little bit when I saw it (I LOVE Ben and Jerry’s!!) anyway, the Duomo was still closed, either due to Mass or just because they’re mean. Whatever.
Next, we went searching for the Jewish Ghetto section of Florence. It took way longer than it should have, but we found it. The synagogue looked sooooo cool. Unfortunately, it too was closed. So I was only able to get some pictures from behind the gate. It was depressing that it was closed, but still cool that we saw it. Then, we followed Nadav back to the hostel. We were all pretty tired from waking up at 6AM. Adam, Nadav and I watched zombieland in the room. It was pretty gruesome, but really funny as well. Ban hour and a half of relaxing was alli needed to get my energy back. I needed it because that night was round 2 of fancy dinner night with Adam and Gabe.
The three of us left the hostel around 8. We walked down the street for about 15 minutes before finding a cool looking lace called Ciro and Sons. It was sooooo good, and the atmosphere was great too. We enjoyed another fantastic 4-course meal. Before we knew it, literally, it was 10:30 PM and we were sitting at dinner wondering where the night went. We made it back to the hostel by 10:50.
Gabe and I wanted to walk around the city, and Joey and Seth decided to join us in the excursion around Florence I really just wanted to see Florence at night. Unlike Rome that had a distinct main street, we didn’t know if there was a main street in Florence. We quickly discovered that Florence was not anything like Rome. It didn’t matter though, we wandered in and out of random convenient stores, candy shops and other random places. We even ended up back at the Duomo during the night. We walked back to the hostel and were asleep by 12:30.
Day 8:
Wake up at 9. We enjoyed a nice breakfast at the hostel with the girls group considering we were at the same hostel. We said good-bye to them and were out the door by 10. We said bye to the girls and made our way to the Leonardo Di Vince museum. At the door, Adam and Gabe split up from us to go see the David. Us five entered the museum. It was three rooms full of his inventions. As I walked in, I heard a familiar voice. I instantly recognized it, but refused to believe it. I turned the corner to see Asaf and Jesse looking at some display. The whole other guys group just happened to be at the same museum as us. We explored the small museum, played with the inventions together, and were the only people there the whole time. I really enjoyed hanging with them again;. Jesse and I caught up a little bit as well. After about an hour of messing around there, we said bye to the group and made our way back to the hostel to get our bags. We met up with Adam and Gabe at 11:45, and got to the train station by 12:05. We had already reserved seats for the train that morning. I grabbed some more Italian pizza and headed to the train where, as I’m writing this (not typing it, obviously), I am sitting next to Gabe. We’re rockin’ out to our own personal The Who marathon from my iPod (and, as I’m typing this, was more fun listening to them on the train then when they played at the superbowl…. Ouch!)
Tonight is Shabbat in Venice. Should be a good time. I’ll write more later!
-----Now in real time: HI!!! We finally arrived in Yerucham. I’ll write more later, btu I don’t wanna distrupt this flow of blog posts about Italy. We moved in to Yerucham two days ago, and since then have done…. Not much productive. We shopped 4 times, have soooooo much food, have cooked some pasta
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