Me & Firenze Aren't Friends

Okay, I wanted to like Florence, I really did. There's so much history and art there that I thought that we would get along and hang out like old friends.

This was not the case. Don't get me wrong, the architecture was beautiful, and it's definitely got a certain charm. But EVERYTHING charges you to get in (churches, gardens, you name it) and so I found myself not really wanting to pay to do things... (Don't even get me started on churches charging admission prices...)

First off, the churches that I DID fork up to go inside--they're just not actually that nice. I mean.... Rome and France have them beat--and have them beat for free. So. Yeah, the churches from the outside are beautiful, but on the inside are really disappointing, expensive, and they won't even let you take pictures (like, "We know our church is shitty, if you take pictures, people will understand and won't pay to come in"). Ugh.

The Ponto Vecchio

So really, I just wandered around from Friday night until Wednesday. I probably spent about half of my time in the hostel because 1) my feet hurt and 2) I couldn't be bothered to kill my feet to wander aimlessly for another 3 hours.

I did go to Pisa, which was awesome. I probably should have spent more time exploring that city. There were some really cool outdoor artisan markets that I could have just spent hours wandering through. I also climbed to the Piazzale Michalangelo which was pretty much the only worthwhile thing to do in Florence. The view is SPECTACULAR. It was definitely refreshing.

The leaning tower of Pisa

Other than that, Florence turned out to be a pretty good city for meeting people. And it had good (if a little expensive) food. The roommates I had for a majority of the time in Florence were a trio of students from Oregon and they were really awesome. I also met two girls from Tennessee on the way to Pisa, and a guy from Boston at dinner on Sunday night. It's funny, because one of the girls from Tennessee mentioned that she couldn't imagine that shy people would ever be able to travel alone, and the girl from Oregon called me "brave" for traveling by myself. That was kind of weird because 1) I'm extremely shy and 2) I don't really consider myself brave--I just do what I want.

Okay--I should admit, I was pretty terrified of traveling by myself. So maybe overcoming that fear and doing it anyway makes me brave, but I think it's more "stubborn" than brave. I wasn't about to let the remote threat of some Mysterious Bad Thing happening to me abroad stop me from seeing Italy, especially since it's more likely that something bad would happen to me on the 5 minute drive from my house to the supermarket that I do at least once a week when I'm home.

In any case, I'm in Venice now. So far I'm liking it a lot more than Florence, but only time will tell. I think I'm heading off to Verona tomorrow, and I'll update the blog with pictures when I've got a chance. There's a better internet connection here, but it's still a little slow to be uploading photos.