We are finishing our three days in Florence and realizing that three days is way more than enough to spend in this cute little city. The hostel is quiet and the computers are available, so I figured I would spend some time doing my entry (I am surprising myself with my ability to stay on top of the blog this week).

When we arrived in Florence on Monday we were so happy to find that we could actually walk to our hostel from the train station rather than spending an hour or so on public transportation to get to where we are staying. We lucked out with this place- it is clean, cheap and accommodating (free internet, free breakfast, free daily walking tours of the city- pretty much everything we need). Anyway, we dropped off our stuff and went on a search for some food (of course) and tried to familiarize ourselves with some of the city. None of us had any idea what Florence has to offer besides Michelangelo's David statue so we went into this trip with a "we can do whatever we want" attitude. It was a nice change of pace from Rome.

After lunch we found a huge market with hundreds of stands selling Italian leather goods, clothes, jewelry, porcelain masks, and tons of other stuff. I fell in love with a beautiful brown leather jacket and tried really hard not to buy it, but I gave in and swore that it was the last extraneous purchase I would be making for myself for a long time (so far, so good). I love it though- and any compliments on it when I get home will be much appreciated . I also got a few Christmas gifts out of the way which I have been trying to do since I arrived in Europe.

I'm really glad that our hostel provided the free walking tours for us because even after spending a day looking around on our own we still weren't too sure of what we were supposed to be seeing. Our first tour took us through what our guide described as Authentic Florence; we went across the river to some older palaces and churches and got a chance to see some of the places that weren't on our maps. The second tour showed us the more famous sights including beautiful cathedrals and some really impressive marble statues.

We visited the Accademia museum on our own yesterday to see David; I didn't expect to be in awe of the statue but it was incredible to see in person. It is much bigger than I had expected and really hard to look away from. The amount of detail is just awesome and it blows my mind that it was all carved out of a single block of marble- Michelangelo covered everything perfectly right down to the veins in David's hands.

Anyway, I'll make this entry a short one because the last three days have been pretty low-key otherwise. Tomorrow morning we leave for Venice- and after that I get to see my mom! This week is flying...