Day 6 in Italy

Journal Entry, May 15, 2012 (written on plane on trip home)
On Tuesday we got a bus ticket and decided to go to Florence. We went in another church that was gorgeous. We weren't even sure what it was, except beautiful and big. We got in line to see the statue of David but after waiting about an hour in the hot sun we decided we just wanted to go back to Siena. Florence is huge - not quaint - and we were all getting tired of museums and such. We did go through part of a market in Florence which was fun. I didn't buy anything. I did get Vickie a scarf on the way back to the bus.
When we got back we ate inside at a nice restaurant. I tried the BIG pasta noodles. I want to try to make fresh pasta.


When we got off of the bus in Florence, we went to the Visitor's center. It appears there is plenty to do in Florence, but the lines to do the tourist-type stuff were getting long.


This is a HUGE church in Florence, right in the center of the town, and it's gorgeous and within walking distance from the bus station.


We went inside it first thing, earlier in the day. By the time we finished our tour, there was a huge line outside of people waiting to get in.

Lunch!

We saw this market and just had to do a little shopping. We waited in line for an hour and barely moved, to see the statue of David. I wish we would have just stayed at the market instead, because we ended up not seeing the statue. We decided to save it for another trip.

The only thing to do while waiting in line was to watch this guy play accordian. The guy in the pink/white stripes and the guy to the left of him went in the street and started dancing!

More sweets...

I just love looking through windows of patisseries .

Another McDonalds. Mom really wanted to go to McDonalds but we told her the "hamburgers" are probably "boar burgers" so she decided to wait until we got home.

On the trip back we got on a double decker bus. It was crowded and I sat down in the first available seat I saw. It was right by an English speaking girl who is sutdying in Italy. She said she attended her Grandmothers wedding in Italy, has relatives there, but she is personally from Canada. She also said she would e-mail me with some places to go in Italy when I come back with my husband. So far she hasn't, but I'm still hoping she does. She also speaks Italian. Thank God. Because after about ten to fifteen minutes our bus started making a weird sound. Then just stopped. Everyone got off and of course, us non-Italian speaking people had no idea what was going on. It reminded me of something you see in a movie where refugees or prisoners are being transferred from bus to bus and they have these scared looks on their faces. We were clueless, so I asked her...what's going on. She kept trying to listen then explained that there will be another bus to come and get us in about 45 minutes. This bus is not running properly. Another bus pulled up in about five minutes and people ran to get on it. She said do not get on that bus as it will stop constantly and it will take about three hours to get you back to Siena. Wait on the next bus. So when the rest of my family got off the bus, I explained to them what was going on. Well, the driver tried to start the bus after about ten minutes, and it started!!!! YEEAAAA! So, lucky for us that we didn't speak Italian and make a run for that other bus. Or we would have been three hours, stopping and starting, and we got back to Siena in record time.

Theresa looks very happy to be geting back on the bus.

When we got back in Siena we discovered an entire area that we hadn't seen before.

Are they serious? 116 Euro for coffee?

We found the cutest little market (Grocery store) I just love going to grocery stores when I'm on vacation. It kind of gives you an idea of what some of their life is like.

Lots of pasta.

and fresh produce.

We ate dinner at a piazza (maybe piazza del Campo) It was a very nice restaurant. One thing that happened was that the male waiter brought us another basket of bread, and after about ten minutes the female waiter said something to him, came to our table, and took our basket of bread away!

Oh yeah - and we had all ordered water (well, after last nights coffee fiasco...) and they brought out ONE BOTTLE of water, filled our glasses about half an inch full, and left the rest of the bottle on the table! You should have seen Dad's face...I'm laughing right now thinking about it!

Mom and Dad went on back to their room and Theresa and I shopped some more.

And we made sure to save room for one more gelato!

We walked around some more and looked at some buildings we hadn't noticed before.

Look closely at the top of this building.

Can you see those heads? Weird huh?

Anyway, we shopped a little more but she was freezing cold so we called it a night and went back to the room to watch another episode of Downton Abbey.

Cindy Bee