European Tour: Europe with Family - Florence

As we all know, they don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Europe...but seeing as how we were Americans, we got a few days off for "Thanksgiving Break." My family took that opportunity to come visit me.

My mom doesn't handle airplanes and flying very well. And at this point in time, she hadn't gotten on an airplane in a very long time. But this was her motivation to get on one, come see her favorite child...in Europe. It was definitely a no-brainer. So my mom, dad and Aunt Sue and Uncle Joe headed over to Italy for a visit. They flew into Rome and did their touristy thing there while I was still in class.

I met up with them in Florence after my midterm.Which was a journey in itself..it's supposed to be a 3 hour and 15 minute train ride from Riva to Florence. However, a person got hit while standing on the train tracks so we had to divert and it ended up taking 6 hours. Thank God for the nice man on the train who realized I understood none of the what the conductor was saying over the loud speaker and translated for me. After my 6 hour adventure, my dad met me at the train station and took me to our hotel. My parents got a room that had the master suite, a kitchen/dining/living room and then a room with a bathroom for me...definitely a big step up from the way I had been traveling with my group in Riva.

We went to a restaurant that their tour guide had recommended...where some people proceeded to drink the very good wine, and lots of it. After singing and dancing through the streets on our way back to the hotel...in our made up Italian no less, we all headed to bed because it was late.

Dad and Me

The next day we were up bright and early (on my Dad's schedule), ate breakfast in the hotel (traditional European breakfast) and then bundled up to head out. In the picture above, Dad and I are standing right outside of our hotel. The Arno River is right behind the wall we're standing in front of and that's the Ponte Vecchio to the right. We walked across the Ponte Vecchio, shopping and heading into shops that caught our fancy along the way. 

Pointing out the Hotel

With Mom and Aunt Sue

Once we got to the other side, Mom made me do the touristy thing and point out where our hotel was...the things I do to please my mother. We spent most of the day just lollygagging around Florence. They had done all the "touristy" stuff (The David, Il Duomo, etc.) the day before with a tour guide and I had already been to Florence with the group. So, there weren't any particular things we were dying to see...we made our way around Florence, stopping shops and buying things as we saw them.

Us at Lunch

We stopped at a local restaurant for lunch, I had a really good pizza...hard to mess up pizza when you're in Italy though. After lunch, we headed over to Santa Croce...another church. In every church that Uncle Joe went in during the trip, he would light a candle and pray that Navy would beat Notre Dame. I'm not exaggerating, in all of the 10 churches he went in, he lit one. And Navy ended up winning the next football season and the years since, so something must have worked. I wanted to light a candle, so I took an unused one and went to light it with an existing one (the way you're supposed to), the candle fell out of its holder and extinguished the lit candle. I hurriedly re-lit that candle, but felt guilty for giving someone's grandma a heart attack. But no worries, I re-lit her candle, so she should be good to go, just a minor scare.

Dad and Uncle Joe with Neptune

After lunch, we continued our tour de Florence on foot. Dad and Uncle Joe had to stop at the statue of Neptune...being in the Navy and all, they were really tight with the God of the Sea, at least, I think that was the reasoning they gave me...?

We also stopped by the fountain of the "Porcellino." Which is a statue of a wild boar. Legend has it that if you rub the snout of the boar, you are destined to come back to Florence. We all rubbed the snout, so it looks like Florence is on my places to visit again.

After our afternoon adventures, we went back to the hotel to rest for a little bit and get ready to go to dinner...once again the tourist of Europe has a motto of "walk, eat, walk, eat" and we were definitely sticking to that.

Aunt Sue with our wine bottle :)

Ponte Vecchio shop

Dinner that night was at a restaurant that was near our hotel. We were some of the only people in there. I managed to knock my full glass of red wine everywhere (I should learn to talk without my hands) but other than that it was a quiet and awesome meal. After dinner, I showed them the place we went to on our earlier trip for Gelato. Once again, the gelato was delicious.

We walked back across the Ponte Vecchio and went to the hotel to rest up for our trip to Venice the next morning.

To be continued...Next Up: European Tour: Europe with Family - Venice