Winter Spirit day 5-6: Florence

Day 5: lauterbrunnen to Florence via Pisa!

After an early breakfast we hopped on the bus for another long drive to Italia! We stopped in the mountains for a quick group photo. 

The snow continued until our first rest stop where we got 20 minutes to play around and throw snow at each other.

After a lunch break at a weird Italian service stop, we arrived in Pisa to pouring rain! We rushed to take a quick photo of the tower and then got straight back on the bus to Florence!

We arrived, had dinner, antipasto, a mixed grill, and lemon gelato. We then headed into the bar for our free welcome shots! 1 turned into 4, which turned into 8, and then a bucket of cocktail! We had a fun night dancing and singing into the early hours of the morning.

Day 6: Florence

I leant my lesson from Paris and today woke up feeling reasonably ok. We headed off for a walking tour of the city, starting at the incredible Duomo. Duomo is Italian for cathedral, and the one in Florence, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore is one of the largest in Italy and the architecture is stunning.

 We then walked through the main square, down to the river and to the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge with many jewellery shops. 

We walked past the Uffizi gallery, and ended in the Piazza della Signoria, where there is a fake Michelangelo's David After the tour we ended at a leather shop for a quick demonstration and went to a restaurant for a Florentine steak! They come in 1kg, so we decided to share with Maree. Because there were 3 of us they offered us a 1.2kg steak! It was really delicious but we probably would have been ok with just the 1kg one. We had chicken liver pate on crostini for a starter and had some spinach to go with the steak, as the steak was just served by itself.

After lunch we walked back to the Duomo to walk up the Campanile di Giotto, or bell tower! We went inside the Duomo first to see the beautiful mural that's under the dome before climbing the tower. It was tough climb but the views over the city at the top were incredible. 

We visited the baptistry and then the Duomo museum to see the beautiful gold doors that were once on the baptistry. We had gelato, then went to Accademia to see the real statue of David. We met up with Maree and another guy and walked around, they got coffee and gelato again while I tried to find a cash machine. We went back to the hostel, went to the pool, decided it was way too cold to swim, then went out to have pizza for dinner. We found a pizzeria near the Duomo which sold slices by weight and was really cheap, and really, really delicious! After dinner we headed to karaoke to meet the rest of the group. It was a really fun night, we were all dancing, singing and drinking! It was quite late when we decided to head home, which was quite a challenge when we didn't really know where we were, we couldn't really read the map, and we'd had a bit to drink. It took a lot longer than it should have and we we were also a bit louder than we should have been, but we made it back safely.