We're Fleeing Florence... ciao!!!!

Good Lord... where do we start? We knew we were going to love Italy, but maybe not this much! Perhaps that's why we've already sorted ourselves out with job offers and the deal seems to be sealed on that one! What we're talking about is we met the owner of our hostel, VLADIMIR, last night as he was walking out of the bldg. He asked us how we were doing and in talking and trying to figure out where a particular restaurant was, we ended up in a long conversation about what we did for a living, our travels, interests, etc... and we thought he was joking, but he seriously offered us jobs! We told him he couldn't afford us and he laughed but he did say that we'd get to travel 2 days out of each month to some place in Europe... Colleen was bartering for 3 so we haven't signed the paperwork yet :)

We arrived on Sunday night, and we had heard about a restaurant that was really close to our hostel so we went to check it out. All was quiet until Colleen busted out the video camera to get some footage of this really high maintenance asshole who sent his pizza back about 4 times because apparently he wasn't satisfied. How can you screw up a pizza THAT BAD in Italy?!?!? At this point, I guess we kind of created a spectacle and the family that was running the place took notice of us. We thought we were in the clear, but on the way out, we were greeted with two shots of Limoncello that we thought looked like lemon drop shots, hence you swig them back like a shot of tequila. Um, no... and glad we asked before we went down that road because this stuff was extremely strong and potent lemon liqueur that you're supposed to sip. We sipped it down with our biscotti that they gave to us and then somehow made our way into the kitchen for a picture with the chef. I immediately started playing with the deep fryer, cooking things, which they weren't particulary excited about for safety reasons, so they attempted to distract us with an appetizer. Oh wait, they were SHOWING us the appetizer, but with the language barrier, we thought they were giving it to us and we ate it. Oops! They were all dying laughing at our stupid antics so we undoubtedly needed a picture of this family for our memories. Colleen was chasing the Uncle around, desperately trying to coerse him into the picture, but this 70-year old man was having none of it! So she snipered a picture of him when he wasn't looking and we did get Mama, Son and Auntie to take the real family portrait together. Ok, we'd worn out our welcome here by this point so it was time to move onto the Irish Pub, Lion's Fountain. And we were so pumped because as we walked in, they were switching the satellite TV over to the Packers/Vikings game- who ended up winning, by the way, b/c we only saw the first quarter????

You'll be pleased to know too that yesterday, January 10, 2005 was a monumental day in the history of Italy. Apparently, they have taken a page out of California's book and it is now illegal to smoke in restaurants and in bars/pubs!!! PRAISE THE LORD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, yesterday was our first full day here- long train ride on Sunday from Munich and we didn't arrive until 7pm. We mapped out what we wanted to see: the Ponte Vecchio- check, Palazzo Vecchio- check, Uffizi- we saw the outside, Accademia/Michaelangelo's David- CHECK, Santa Maria Novella Church- check, Pitti (Kitty-we'll explain but you will have to see the video) Palace, and we climbed the 500 stairs to the top of Brunelleschi's Duomo. That was actually really amazing and it provided a wonderful 360 degree view of the entire city- too bad it wasn't a clearer day.

We'll just touch briefly on the Kitty Palace but when we entered the Boboli Gardens, there were cats everywhere! I, of course, was slightly more enthralled than Colleen so I had to stop and play with these little four-legged beasts. This one really was in desperate need of attn and started rubbing on my leg. I bent down to pet him/her and it immediately jumped into my lap. The next thing I knew, the cat had climbed up and over my shoulder and was clinging to me for dear life purring... so cute! Colleen captured the entire thing on video, told me that I couldn't bring my friend with us b/c we had no room, and I pouted for a minute or 12.

After all the sightseeing yesterday, we popped back into our hostel to freshen up for dinner and that's when we met the owner. We told him we wanted to eat at Aqua al Due and he insisted on walking us there. On the way, we got sidetracked into a cute little wine bar called Frescobaldi, where we polished off a bottle of great red wine and some appetizers. Then , as we were making our way towards the restaurant, guess who we stumbled upon on the street where our hostel was? This guy Phillip who we met in our hostel in Prague that is from CA!

We made our way to the restaurant where were surprised to find out that Vladi new everyone, from people in the street, to the entire staff at Aqua al Due. We sampled some of the best pastas we've ever had, then we moved along to the salad sampler (didn't do quite as good a job on that one because we were so full from the pasta), but somehow we made room for the dessert sampler at the end! And oh my God, it was soooo good!!!! We managed to locate the same bottle of wine that we had consumed at Frescobaldi and polished off 1 1/2 more bottles at dinner, compliments of our friend. About half way thru dinner, in came Phillip to see how we were doing. We got talked into drinking some grappa- don't do it!!!!!!- and Phillip was really amused because he devised a way to make us take drink and then snap a picture of our sour faces from the aftermath... they are seriously so funny!

Today we are leaving for Rome and we will check-in with everyone from there... we hope it's as wonderful as Florence was, but more importantly, we hope it stops raining in CA before next Wed when we get back! I guess we picked a good time to leave :)

Ciao!

Kyle & Colleen