June 22nd

We left our campsite at Camp Jolly and headed to the train station to take the train to Florence. The train was a longer train to Napoli so it was cheaper than a train that ended in Florence by about twenty euros a piece and had 6 person cabins. We didn't have reserved seats, but ended up stuck in a cabin with a really annoying little kid who really needed some discipline and an older kid and their respective moms. Shew. Sleeping was not an option and after not sleeping at all the night before, I was dog tired when we got to Florence. We got to our hostel, Hostel 7 Santi, and wow this place is big! It's an old monastery type thing and is nice and clean :) We went Florence wandering and found the tourist information center and a few other sights. It started randomly raining so we found dinner at an "English pub" chain restaurant and had a good filling meal that wasn't pizza and pasta. Meals like those are very exciting. On the way back, we had delicious gelato and my frutti di bosco with chocolate syrup tasted just like Baskin Robbins' Love Potion 31 which is my favorite ice cream ever! I had a scoop of that with kinder chocolate flavor and was in heaven. A block from our hostel is the Florentina FC soccer stadium and we heard all kinds of noise from there and all sorts of lights so we went over. They were showing the Argentina/Greece game on huge screens and there was a bar and people hanging out everywhere. They are showing all the games there and it's free and open to the public. Really neat! After that, a good night's sleep did us well.

June 23rd

This morning we hit up the tourist office for info and found out that there are fireworks tomorrow for John the Baptist's Anniversary/Celebration day thing in Florence. Then we headed to San Maria del Fiore Cathedral and checked it out because it was free. It was nice, pretty big, but pretty plain other than the ceiling. There was a neat clock that ran backwards and was upside down from what we normally see on clocks and it was a 24 hour clock. We went back to the Leonardo daVinci exhibit we'd seen to go there and have lunch. For 8 euro a piece we got entrance and a piece of pizza and a glass of coke so it was a pretty decent deal. The museum was awesome because they had working models of all kinds of Leonardo's sketches and inventions so we got to play and had a lot of fun being nerdy engineers. On the way back to the main plaza, we hit up the Orsanmichele which is a pretty small church, but was pretty. It's in the shape of a cube and in the middle of a square so it's really different from other churches we've seen. There were sculptures along the outside and two were by Donatello (Ryan got excited by the TMNT reference again).

Then we went to go to the Galleria degli Uffizi (museum with Botticelli's works) and waited in line for about an hour until they told us they weren't letting us in for another hour. We didn't want to waste such a nice weather day so we went up to Piazzale Michelangelo which is a big overlook with great views of Florence. That was nice and then we tried to go over to Forte di Belvedere, but because some girl was wandering around it in the dark one night and fell off into the canyon and died, it's been closed for two years and we couldn't go. Ugh. We walked down the hill to find the ticket office to buy reserved tickets for the Galleria dell'Accademia (where David is) and the Uffizi museum. With reserved tix, you have a time and don't have to wait in line, but we had to pay a little more money for the tickets, but saving ourselves the hours and hours of time is worth it. We headed over to an Irish Pub we'd scouted out yesterday for the USA/Algeria game. WOW WHAT A GAME! Score was 0-0 until stoppage time at the very end when the US finally put a goal in and the eruption in that pub was amazing! I have never ever ever seen or heard Ryan so happy and excited. We won the game and thus are going on to the World Cup knock out round as first in the group! It was such a wonderful moment - especially since some of the England fans were still hanging out near the other TV that was showing the England/Slovenia game. :)

We went over to Palazzo Vecchio since it was open late and they had a discounted rate for 18-25 year olds so it was only 9 euro total to get in. Lucky for us, there were very few people there so late and we continued our soccer celebration in the palace, being nicely beer'd up, cheering and dancing around like loonies. The palace was neat, and probably would have been more appreciated if we were a little more sober and focused, but it was definitely a lot of fun. Then we decided to climb back to Piazzale Michaelangelo to watch the sunset over Florence. We sat on the stairs with all kinds of other people and ate dinner. These crazy guys from Cyprus were chugging entire bottles of wine and trying to keep it down and being totally silly singing every "American" song they knew for the college kids from Penn State. The sunset was nice, but not as good as Venice because the sun hit the mountains before hitting the buildings. After the sunset, we headed back to the hostel and stopped by the arena to check the Germany/Ghana game score on the way. Now we're back and settling in for bed. We're seeing the Uffizi museum at 10:30am and Ryan needs his beauty rest :)

June 24th

This morning we visited the Galleria degli Uffizi and saw a lot of Botticelli's works, including the Birth of Venus, and Leonardo's unfinished Adoration of the Magi. I had never really liked the Birth of Venus, I guess because I didn't know what it was about, but after seeing the real thing and understanding all that was in it, it's pretty amazing. Leonardo's painting was big, but not as cool since it was unfinished, but you can certainly see Leonardo's distinct style. There was also a Michelangelo painting of Mary with the baby climbing over her shoulder where Mary's arms are beefy. According to the tour guides, the guy who commissioned it didn't like it and wasn't going to pay for it because the scene is not very serene and the muscles were inappropriate, but after a few weeks, he did buy it. There were also a few Rafael (another ninja turtle) paintings. After the museum, we grabbed some lunch and relaxed. We headed over to the Accademia to see David a little before three (when our reserved ticket was for) and they let us in. The Accademia was a much smaller museum than the Uffizi and other than David, there was a cool teeny teeny exhibit on old instruments, some unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo and not much else. I loved the old instruments exhibit because before you went in, they had computers set up where there was a lot of interactive info on music of the times and the instruments in the collection as well a sound clips of the instruments, so Ryan got to learn and understand what I was talking about when I said there's a big difference between a piano and a harpsichord. Anyway, the exhibit had some cool old pianos and even a little cross section that you could play with of both a piano and harpsichord action - which I'd never seen before and it was super cool. They had a lot of Michelangelo's unfinished sculptures, but none were as interesting and cool as the Pieta we saw in Milan's Castle Sforza. David was a much bigger sculpture than we both had expected. It was really awesome to see because they have it set up nicely to see him from all angles. The security people were crazy good, but I eventually snapped a photo. :) I got a couple of the Birth of Venus before a dude yelled at me, but there's an icky glare from the plexiglass. On the way to the Accademia, we finally found an affordable print of Michelangelo's fingers thing that's in the Sistine Chapel (where he's reaching out to God). There's a Counting Crows song we love that had a great quote about that part of the painting and so we wanted a print so we can write the lyrics on it and hang it up. We bought two after the museum (in case I mess the first one up) and I'm so glad we found what Ryan had wanted for only 4 euro each :)

We came back to the hostel to unload our things before heading over to watch the Italy/Slovakia game at the stadium that had already started. The place was certainly more packed than it has been, but unfortunately Italy lost so they finished bottom of the group. Everyone was really disappointed because it was a decent game and there were plenty of opportunities to score, but it just didn't happen. Now we're back at the hostel, trying to wash the black city grime from our Tevas and getting ready to head back toward the river for dinner and the fireworks. This morning there was a teeny processional for this John the Baptist day thing from the Opera house to the Basilica (about 20 feet) with people in funny costumes and flags. We didn't get to really watch because there were a lot of people and we were running to the Uffizi to get in for our ticket time.

Update: We went to the grocery and picked up some wine, mozzarella cheese balls, olives, bakery bread and cherries for dinner and walked down and found a spot right on the river bank. We spread out our picnic as the sun was setting and watched the fireworks. It was a pretty great show (even Ryan was impressed by the size of the show for the seemingly small holiday)! We had a wonderful time and it was super romantic and nice :)

June 25th

Today we didn't really have any plans other than to visit the Cupola of Santa Maria di Fiori, so we went straight there after sleeping in some, but the line was huge so we wandered to other churches. We went over to San Spirito, but it was closed, so we grabbed lunch and ate near a park that was both shady and shady if you know what I mean. We then tried to go to another church near some sort of Palace courtyard, but it was closed too, so we ate our fresh peaches in the nice courtyard of the Palace. Then we found the Santa Maria Novella church and could go in so we paid and went in. It was a really nice church and was pretty cool. The ceilings had super cool designs and it was beautiful. Then we headed back to the Lion's Fountain Pub where we watched the US game to watch Portugal/Brazil (and my hottie dream hubby, Ronaldo) but the pub was pretty dead so it wasn't as exciting. It was definitely a welcome break for our feet though! Then we tried the Cupola again and this time there was no line at all, so we went in and up to the top and there weren't many people at all! We figured we would just go up close inside the dome to see the paintings (we saw people walking along the balconies) so we were really happy when we got to go out onto the top for a 360 view of Florence! There were two separate balconies in the dome we got to view from too, and on the upper one, we could reach out and touch the base of the dome fresco (there was plexiglass)! That was super cool because painted dudes kneecaps were much bigger than our heads! The view from the roof was cool and it was neat to see all the place we'd been. After climbing back down, we stopped at a bar for the appertivo buffet. You buy a drink, and you get to each from the buffet for free, so we chowed down on cous cous and rice mixes and delicious feta and tomato salads. They actually made my Amaretto Sour correctly so I was happy. We went back to the hostel and found that we had more roommates. One pair of our new roommates were French lesbians who proceeded to shower together for a long time in our one bathroom and then make a tent around their bed and make out all night (ughhhhh). The other pair were two aussie guys, one of which we recognized (and he recognized us) from London so we all four got to talking downstairs and that was fun.

Good news about home stuff too - the Hoock house we want is still on the market and is down to $209,000 and currently a 15yr loan would be $1500/mo mortgage so we're pretty excited. We're not missing stuff just to save, but we are staying at our low daily budget and we should have some money left when we get back to hopefully get the house thing moving!! We're so excited!!!!!!