Today started off with a 9 o'clock wake up call followed by some much needed showers. Luckily for us the water is hot in this hostel! As we were getting ready to walk out the door Franco approached us as to why we missed breakfast (he apparently cooks for all the residence of the hostel every morning), this is something that we're not going to miss tomorrow. The first thing on our agenda for the day was to head to the Santa Maria Cathedral and climb on top of t...

We have internet! We are in Florence, Italy now, it's actually our second day here so we'll tell you about yesterday first. We arrived by train on the Eurostar Italia (E.S.I) around 1:30 pm. The train ride was relatively short, roughly 2 hours 45 minutes, and very beautiful through the mountains of central Italy. We traveled through "Wine Country." We arrived at Santa Maria Novella train station and had to find our way to the Piazza della Republica. We...