today was our first full day in florence...and we got to start it with a free breakfast! they even had a menu to choose from (we'll ignore that my 'french toast' was really more like toast covered in scrambled eggs)... after breakfast we hopped onto a free tour given by the hostel with a really cute italian girl that showed us around the main sites of the city for about 3 hours. here was the takeaway message: Medici Family rules over all of florence...dont mess with them. after the tour we started heading back in the direction of the train station to get tickets for our next stop, but got stuck in the stupid outdoor markets...theres just so much fun stuff to look at and try to stop yourself from buying! i wasnt very successful... after a couple more gelato stops we got back to exploring the city and started first at the duomo that he had come to love so much since the night before. we paid a little to climb up the inside of it to see the view from the top. only 467 stairs up, no big deal, we're pro's at the the whole, climbing up tall buildings thing by now...but it was an awesome climb...luckily none of the steps that i was afraid of. The dome of the church is actually built in two parts, an inner dome and an outer dome. the neatest part of the climb was right near the top, the stairs got crazy steep as you were acutally climbing up the outside of the inner dome while being right underneath the inside of the outer dome! and then we got to the top and got the amazing panoramic view of the city! unfortunately there were some french teenagers writing on the marble and thinking they were so awesome...by the time i had contemplated a way to stop and embarass them at the same time they had already moved on...oh well.... afterwards we walked towards ther river to see the view from one of the famous bridges...it was really cute becuase all along the river people had taken locks and locked them onto the railings...then youre supposed to throw the key into the river for good luck. i feel bad for the fish that get bopped on the head randomly, but its still a cute idea! walking around the bridge there were a ton of ridiculously fancy jewelry stores with ridiculously prices jewelry...so we did some imaginary ring shopping...what?? its only 250,000 euros! the next stop was for a view of the sunset. we had read about a lookout of that requried a 'bit of a hike' up to the top..whatever, we did the duomo...bring it on! it wasnt too bad...hiking up some windy roads and then another set of stairs (im so over stairs by the way) but then it opened onto this huge staircase where there were already tons of people (more like couples) sitting waiting for the view. you could see the entire city from there! and minus the scaffolding in front of some of the big buildings...we had a completely unobstructed view of the sun going down. most everyone else had wine and fancy dinners and were very romantic...we on the otherhand had diet cokes and fruit snacks...totally the same thing... so the sun went down and we said yay and took some pictures and then realized it was dark and freezing and we were sooooo far away from the hostel. so we started the trek back...stopping at a touristy pizza place along the way and then went back to the hostel and sat out on the patio with a bunch of other people (Chimney was there of course, but we also met chicago boy, irish guy and mr australia!) we stayed outside until late and then stumbled up to bed...who needs sleep anyways!

nina