Falling Hard for Florence

You know that part in Pride and Prejudice when Mr. Darcy tells Elizabeth:

I went all Mr. Darcy in Florence. From the minute we began walking around the city, I was smitten. Bewitched.

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We took a quick 1.5 hour train to Florence on Monday morning. It was in the train station in Rome that we read a headline about the mass shooting in Orlando that weekend. Suddenly, we felt really far yet close to home all at the same time. Our hearts hurt for the news.

The train ride was relaxing - I always wish transportation by train was more of an option in the States. When we got to Florence, we decided we could handle the 10 minute walk to the hotel with our luggage since the rain had held off. Now is a good time to mention how proud I was that we managed to only pack two carry-on suitcases and our own personal item for this trip (ok, so my personal item was a duffle bag...but still!) It's what made moving place to place much less stressful.

We stayed in Hotel Pendini, which has a great location in Piazza della Repubblica near the city center. After we dropped off our things, we picked up our Firenzecards (if you plan to see several monuments/museums in Florence and can splurge a bit for the sake of drastically cutting down your wait time in line, do it! We loved ours.) From there, we just wandered, which was awesome! We instantly admired how clean and walking friendly Florence is. It just felt comfortable right away. Also, while we were visiting, Florence's version of fashion week, Pitti Uomo, was going on, so there were popup bars and lounge areas setup in the streets with fashionable people out and about. It made for fantastic people watching.

We slowly made our way to Piazzale Michelangelo around sunset that evening. It was a 30-minute walk from our hotel, and right before we crossed over the river for the final stretch, hangriness kicked in (definition: the feeling of being hangry). So we stopped for a snack, which ended up being two awesome sandwiches to tie us over until dinner.

The view from the top was as lovely as I remembered from my first, brief visit to Florence. We celebrated our hike up to the top with a small bottle of Prosecco. We did some more great people watching - a guy was being made up to look like Charlie Chaplin, another couple was taking turns taking photos for their fashion blog and everywhere you turned selfie sticks filled the air.

When we walked back from dinner our exhaustion hit hard. My aunt, uncle and cousins would later chuckle at the fact that we walked to the Piazzale (my uncle was planning to drive us the following night). We sat down to dinner in the Piazza de la Repubblica and devoured some mozzarella and pasta before hitting the hay tired, full and happy.