My lesson about Sundays is learned.

January 9, 2011

My roommates and I woke up early to start our adventure off to go find towels, because we had a hard time finding any and I had been drying off with a t-shirt after I showered. We looked in this book that our landlords left for us which has tons of information about Florence in it and found a department store called Upim which was supposively huge and cheap and about a half hour walk. We started our journey there and walking down the cobble streets I stepped in something squishy and looked at my shoe...yep I stepped in dog crap! But there isn't grass like anywhere so I tried scraping as much off as I could, but all of a sudden we got to this huge arch that had grass near it and could finally wipe it off! But practically half of the people you see walking the streets have dogs, and they're mainly small dogs with short stubby legs. Anyways as we walked the streets we saw that not very many stores were open and after walking 30 minutes to get to Upim it was definitely closed. I guess stores normally aren't open on Sundays, and if they do open it isn't until later in the afternoon/evening. Thankfully we passed this store on our way back that I was able to buy a towel and two hand towels. We also were extremely hungry as we were walking back and right down our street we discovered this small precious gem that has paninis and different dinner specials. I ordered a panini that had roast beef cutlets on it with lettuce and tomato - it was so good and so cheap! We decided it would be a good idea to find the school, but we couldn't find the name of our school's street on the map and ended up in this awesome piazza with tons of statues (including the fake statue of the David) and saw a couple Kent students who pointed us in the right direction. My one friend Claire has a best friend Nick that came with us and he took us to this awesome restaurant called El Gato E Il Volpe (the cat and fox) and it was the most amazing food in the entire world! I got tortellini con creme e proscuitto (ham and cheese) - I literally couldn't finish it because it was so rich and delicious! Afterward Nick also took us to his favorite gelato shop - Gelateria Dei Neri (which has now become all of our favorite gelato shop!). I was so stuffed though that I only got a little cone with caffe gelato for 50 cents and I said to the man behind the counter "come se dice" (meaning how do you say) and pointed to the little cones and he looked at me, giggled and said "uhh mini cone?" It was a great ending to a day that started off a little on the rough side!

This cool arch on the way to Upim. (also the grass I wiped my poopy shoe in)

Converse shoe ads in Italy?

My dish tortellini dish at El Gato e El Volpe (Cat and Fox)