Firenze 2006-2007

Break- Part 3

I know I've skipped a part- the road trip through Southern France, Northern Spain and Portugal, but that one is taking a long time to write and I wanted to put this up before heading out tonight, so here it is.
Dad, Stephen and I got back to Florence at about 4 on the 27th. I immediately caught up on some e-mails and relaxed for the first time in three weeks or so. We went to dinner at Spera, ran into Jess and Lindsey and their families. After getting back, the Perrins arrived from Heidelberg and after saying hi, Daniel Willis and I went out for a bit. I came back and went to bed, happy to be back in Florence.
The next day, I spent the morning with Stephen and Jacob. We all went to the leather market and looked around before coming back and heading off to Elizabeth’s house for lunch. We drove out there without too much trouble and me, dad, Stephen, and the Willises all had lunch together with Elizabeth. After visiting a bit, we had our anitpasta which was a wide assortment of traditional Italian appetizers. It was good, and I liked some stuff that I didn’t think I would. Then it was the pasta, which was also great. It was like crepes filled with cheese and covered in tomato sauce. After that, we had the main course- Turkey and some other meat, I forget with several sides. Then we all took a walk and came back for dessert. After finishing dessert, it was starting to get dark and I noticed that it was like 5:30. After our 4 hour lunch or so, we talked some more and then headed back. Conner, Stephen and I then went for a bike ride around the town before coming back and heading to bed after a movie.
I spent most of the next morning with Jacob, John, Griffin, and Stephen walking around the city and looking around. After lunch, I headed back, relaxed a bit and looked at what I was gonna do with the last 10 days or so of break after New Years. We went back to Spera for dinner that night, and came back to watch some movies before going to bed really early.
Next day, I went to Café Liberta with dad and then walked around the city, looking at some of the stuff dad wanted to get pictures of before eating lunch at Café Calabria on Piazza Santo Spirito. That afternoon was more movies and relaxing while doing some laundry and getting ready to head out to Roma the next day. I ate dinner with Steven and Anna who were around town before heading back to the villa and writing several of the long blog entries like the one you’re reading. I got tired a little while later and went to bed and slept way in the next day. When I finally woke up, Steven and I went to get panini and then headed off to Campo di Marte to get our train to Roma. I said bye to dad and Stephen as they would be gone by the time we got back the next day.
We got to Roma at about 5 and then went to the Pantheon to meet up with Amanda, but on the way, we ran into 4 Heidelbergers, so we made plans to meet up later and all spend New Years together. We met Amanda and said hi, then made plans to meet her and Lanie- her sister there after dinner. Steven and I set off in the direction of the Hard Rock Café, kinda wanting American food, but they were having a New Years party, so it was a set menu and not American at all, not to mention overpriced. We then headed to the Buffalo Grill, but it was closed, so we gave up the American food idea and settled for some pizza. We then went back to the Pantheon and met Amanda and Lanie. We had about 3 hours until midnight at that point, so we set off in the direction of the Boca della Verita’ from the movie Roman Holiday. We say it, but couldn’t put our hands in it ourselves as it was gated off for the night. We then walked all along the Tiber river to the Vatican. It was a long walk, but a lot of fun, and it was a ton of Roma that I’d never seen before. When we got to the Vatican, we looked around St. Peter’s square- saw the Christmas decorations and then headed to Piazza del Popolo for the New Year’s. We got to the piazza and saw that there were about 20,000 people jammed into a piazza not much bigger than Piazza della Reppublica in Florence. Everyone was jam packed, so the 4 of us pushed our way to the front and saw the craziness happen. When the New Year came round, there were fireworks all over the place- not organized fireworks, but just people shooting them off all over the place. Hundreds of noise makers and sparklers, and champagne spraying everywhere. When bottles of champagne were empty, they would be thrown into the deserted middle of the piazza and would shatter. So, after about 10 minutes there was broken glass all over the piazza. The fireworks continued for hours and long after we left the piazza, we could hear them all over the city. We ran across the middle war like zone of the piazza and looked around a bit before heading off to the Spanish Steps, where we found a similar scene. We walked from there back to Piazza Navona where we found a carnival that was still open, so we walked around it for a while before heading to the Campo di Fiore, but it was packed and overpriced much like the rest of the city on this night, so everyone headed back to their hotels and Steven and I headed back to the train station and bought tickets for a train about 90 minutes late, so we waited with hundreds of other people at the station and got on our train and were back in Florence by 8 this morning.
When we got back to the Villa, I slept until about 2 after being up all night, and then caught up on more e-mails and writing more blog stuff before heading out to get a panino for dinner- my first food of the day.
The last part of my break will start tomorrow when Steven and I head off for my second tour of Eastern Europe of the break.
(Some of the glass we had to walk across in Roma... this was only one patch of it- there were hundreds others like it)
(View from the top of the Spanish Steps)
I mainly took video, and I don't know how to post those. More pictures will come when I get them from other people I was with.

posted by Daniel Williams @ 04:45