Florence Day Trip

Our Wednesday morning (July 31st) we jumped in a taxi and headed to the main train station in Rome.  We got there entirely too early but we didn't really know what we were doing and wanted time to figure it out.

Before we jumped on our train, I had to use the restroom and I had to PAY one euro.  Unreal!  And I'll just put it out there - they weren't using the income to clean the facilities.  Gross.

So we got on our first European train!  We had thought about spending the night in Florence and I'm so glad we didn't lug all of our luggage up there.  This was just a fun day trip.

Lots of sunflower fields!

We arrived at the main train station in Florence and set out on a not very planned day.  First stop - Duomo.  It's amazing.

We didn't go in the Duomo, just walked all of the way around it.  Then we just walked the streets.

We got my mom a wallet and Kevin also found one he liked.  We loved looking at all of this gelato and took this picture especially for both of our Mamas.

For lunch we found a little place and had a quick bite.  I loved the prosciutto, arugula and mozzarella sandwiches that were so common over there.  

  

We kept strolling to Ponte Vecchio which is on the left of this picture.  Basically it's a pedestrian only bridge with lots of shops on either side.

We didn't have a train ride back until 7pm that night but we were kinda done in Florence so we headed back to the train station and waited in line to get on an earlier train.  I must note - this was the ONLY line we stood in on our whole two weeks in Europe.  And it was a 45 minute long one, ha!  

I know we should have done museums and things like that in Florence but we were just kinda sightseeing/tourist-ed out.  That's probably weird but we were.  We were just tired.

The train cab that we were on didn't have air conditioning so they told us we could move up to another cab.  Kevin saw an open table at the restaurant and like a genius said we should just sit there.  He had the right idea!  It only costed us a lil cocktail hour and it was SO fun!

We got back to our hotel in Rome and showered up for dinner.  I felt like a European in the below picture with my crossbody bag!

And of course we headed to our favorite place - Taverna Rossini for an appetizer.  We like bopping around different places if you couldn't tell.  We always like to try out different things at different places instead of having an entire meal at one restaurant.  

Around 9pm we headed to dinner at Zero.  (9pm is a usual dinner time)  It was a lil fru-fru for Kevin but he found some pesto gnocchi that sounded good to him.  I had tuna!

We headed back to the hotel and packed our bags to leave Rome!