Welcome to Florence

day 4  //  london  //  pisa  //  florence  

After a much too early bus ride from our hotel, our time in london came to a close as we finally arrived at the airport en route to Florence.  We had to get there especially early since we had our whole group of about 100 checking multiple bags.  I had some troubles but finally checked my 15 pound overweight bag onto the plane (if you think that's bad, you should see how much some of the other girls brought).  Then we grabbed Starbucks in the airport and waited to board our plane.  We were seated randomly, which was kind of cool because it gave us a chance to chat with other kids from our group that we hadn't had the chance to meet yet.  After a quick flight that I slept straight through, we arrived in Pisa.  This is where everything began to feel foreign as every sign was written in Italian and every person spoke it.  We got our baggage (well, not all of us did… there were about 10 girls whose bags didn't make it, they would get them the next day, but I was lucky this time - PHEW).  Then we all loaded on a bus and headed towards our final destination - Firenze. We arrived at our hotel, which was surprisingly really nice, and had a short time to get situated and ready before we all headed to dinner.  We walked across town to this amazing castle/palace place with the most beautifully decorated rooms where we would have our first Italian dinner.  The food was heavenly - a four course meal with wine.  Yep, we had arrived in Italy.  We saw some central landmarks like the Ponte Vecchio and the Duomo on the way home before we all crashed hard back in our hotel rooms.

Where we ate dinner… SO gorgeous

The one and only Duomo