La Dolce Vita: Florence

So here we are... in Tuscany... in a villa... on a vineyard. Don't know if it gets any better. Probably doesn't. We are a lucky group of kids. 

After leaving Venice we hop on a gigantic tour bus and meet Mario our (professional) driver and head to Tuscany. We make a pit stop at a castle and eat lunch, then drive the rest of the way to our villa where Mario proceeds to backdown the mile-long, winding driveway, hardly big enough for a normal car, in our tour bus. That was impressive. And finally, we have made it to paradise which included Magdalena our new cooking and cleaning Italian grandma. Eat dinner, sleep, wake up and head to Florence. 

Florence is alive. There are a million things going on at once. Ancient mixes with modern. The universities keep it new and relevant, yet the architecture and history keep it grounded in the past. I guess that goes with any city but in Florence old and new completely go hand in hand. I like the vibe - I could stay here a while. 

We saw gallery after gallery and duomo after duomo. We shopped at the leather market and stood in front of the David and the graves of Michelangelo and Galileo.  We watched street performers and ate gelato two to three times a day. And after a big day in the city we would retire to the villa where we would continue to drink wine and push each other into the swimming pool. To be honest, and this might sound cheesy, but it felt like a dream. 

After three days in Florence we went to Lucca, a medieval village, where we biked on the castle wall and shopped on the winding streets. Then went to Pisa to see the leaning tower. Mario found it dumb that so many people wanted to see a building that was built wrong. Stupid tourists... But it really was cool to see if you looked past all of the people in power stance pretending to hold it up for pictures. It was the first time in my life I had vertigo. Being inside a huge tower that was tilted and seeing outside where the ground was flat really got me. Climbed to the top. Took lots of pictures and headed to the Mediterranean Sea for dinner. It 'twas pretty. 

We spent the next day relaxing by the pool. It rained at first but then the sun came out and we all got sunburnt. After walking a million miles a day it was sweet to just chill out because the next day we were at it again. Got a tour of the vineyard, little did we know we were sleeping in a 16th century farm house with more history than you could imagine, and learned the long, meticulous way that wine is made. No wonder it gets so expensive... Then we headed to Siena. Michael had told me it was a photographers heaven and it really was. It was beautiful. (Also in Siena, I ran into a friend that I hadn't seen for two years! Small world.) 

The last night in Tuscany we dressed up, ate a massive dinner and packed for the last part of the trip: Milan. It sucks leaving paradise but on to the next adventure.