Shop till ya drop in Florence!

Amber and I just got home from a wonderful weekend in Firenze! However, in true Italian fashion, we missed our first train to Florence (due to our bus coming a half hour late). Luckily, we sipped cappuccinos and caught another train a few hours later!

Arriving in Florence was super easy--the city is extremely small compared to Rome (which isn't actually a huge city either) and we found our hostel without a problem. This hostel wasn't as nice as the one I stayed at in Naples--the bathrooms were pretty disgusting and we thought our host was a bit creepy, but that's what you get when you travel on a budget! Amber and I agreed that the top 2 rules of staying in a hostel are:
1. Check for bedbugs (my roommates learned the hard way)
2. Don't accept bowls of alcohol from strangers!!
Our hostel had a free "sangria party" every night in which the hostel owner put a large bowl full of questionable alcohol on the table in the "common room" which also happened to be his bedroom... Weird! Amber and I were the only ones not drinking it; did these people never learn the "don't take candy from strangers" rule?!

Our lovely establishment:

Anyway, we weren't there to spend time at the hostel--so Saturday morning we set out to climb the Duomo:

The hike up is quite claustrophobic & I'm not sure how a big person could manage! The walls are very narrow and the ceiling slants so far at some points I couldn't even stand up straight.

I wish I had taken more pictures because it was incredible! It took us about a half hour to climb the stairs to the top and the view was well worth the effort:


After climbing the Duomo, we shopped our little hearts out! Florence is known for their amazing leather goods and we took advantage of it. We shopped 2 different markets outside and then hit just about every leather store in town. Let's just say that the number of bags we carried home was a quite a bit more than what we arrived with. Mom, I can't wait to Skype you and show you what I got you--you are going to die! All in all, Amber and I had a fantastic trip this weekend and I am so sad she leaves tomorrow! Good thing Adam will be arriving in Roma in less than a week!!