Florence
Friday, December 22, 2006
The overnight in the train wasn't too bad. At least there was breakfast given to us before we alighted at Florence itself.
Didn't take long for us to locate our hostel.. only to find out that the hostel doors were locked! Despite waiting for more than half an hour outside the hostel knocking on the doors, blasting the doorbell and ringing the reception, no one attended to us.
A neighbouring hotel receptionist told us that the hostel owner is probably sleeping. This has happened to other travellers before us.
Whoa.. ok lor.. finding no other way but to wander around as much of Florence as we can with our heavy backpacks until later in the morning when we hope the hostel will be open.. we did just that. Luckily it took us only a few steps away from the hostel when Weijie called the hostel receptionist again thank heavens, someone picked up the phone.
It was a one-woman-show hostel. Yup. She did everything there was to be done in this small hostel.. from settling our rooms to cleaning up to cooking breakfast for the rest of the guests. And my my was her breakfast fantastic! She baked some extra muffins for us and it made up for everything that ever happened in the morning.. coz her baking was WONDERFUL! Added on to her jovial nature and taking the initiative to explain how to get around viewing all the sights in Florence, this hostel began to feel like it would be the best hostel that we will be staying in.. And it indeed was.
So, without our backpacks this time, we started to explore our first stop in Italy. A bright sunny day so I didn't hesitate to don my Oakleys haha. Things in Italy were relatively cheaper than Switzerland.. or in any case UK.. and there were quite a few street markets for us (especially the girls) to satisfy their shopping cravings. Other than that.. we just visited the main churches and the Piazza della Signoria which used to be the Florence town centre and houses many (replicas of) famous Italian sculptures.
Though Florence was an arty-farty place to be.. we still had our dose of nature after climbing up a small hill with brought us to a spectacular view of the city of Florence. Breathtaking.
Come to Italy how can don't eat pasta? And yes, we struggled with Italian with lotsa hand gestures in order to place our orders of different varieties of pasta for lunch.. which was, delicious =)
Perhaps the most significant part about Rome would be visiting the very famous Michaelangelo's statue David. It was only after seeing the statue for real that I understood what all the fuss was about - it was really magnificent.. a piece of work that none other replica could live up to. The amount of detail that went into the sculpture and the flawlessness of the gaze on David's eyes were unparalleled. Applause to Michaelangelo.
Signed off at
11:59 pm
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th reader
