Venice and Florence

Wow, life has been life-ing but I am back to talk about my Venice and Florence post.

Venice! We took a plane from Rome. It was about one hour. Driving or taking the train would have been 4 hours from Rome. You pick what you prefer. We only stayed for the day, which did limit our time, as we had to think about getting to the airport on time for our flight back, so I do recommend staying for a night or two to fully experience Venice.

Upon arriving in Venice, a taxi carried us to the water port where you can get on a ferry to the town.

The water was beautiful as per the old colorful buildings. I was awestruck at all the nice water motors flowing in the water and the unique feel.

We walked around, got a bite to eat, tried the well-known Suso gelato, but my absolute highlight was the gondola ride! It has always been a dream of mine to go on a gondola in Venice. I’ve seen it in pictures but nothing beats the actual experience.

Thankfully, we had a very kind and patient driver, who gave us history, and took photos of us. It was so serene, and breath-taking. Enjoy these photos.

I wish we could have stayed longer but we had to head back to the ferry, then to the airport to catch our flight back to Rome. I remember feeling so exhausted at the end of this day as there was a lot of hassle to stay on time. I do not recommend staying for just the day, unless you really prefer that.

Florence!

Florence was a one hour train ride from Rome. Boy, it was so hot on this day. We went to Galleria Dell Accademia to see the statue of David! I remember learning about this in honors humanities in high school, so it was surreal to see it in person. There were also other well-known paintings and statues. Definitely a must when going to Florence.

We went to the infamous wine window. There are hundreds of wine windows in Florence. It is a small window where you can order your wine of choice. I got an Aperol Spritz of course, and it was so cool. Once you were done, you just had to put your glass back in a basket, unless you bought the glass.

I had to check out the big sandwiches! We went to a sandwich spot called SandwiChic. It was hard to read the menu as it was all in Italian, so I tried my best to identify certain meats. I was not crazy about my sandwich but I think it is because I wasn’t fully sure of what I ordered, (LOL). I was a little bummed about that. My sister loved her sandwich! There are many other sandwich spots to check out.

Lastly, me and my sister decided to sit at this little wine bar in the shopping area of Florence, as it was soooo hot. We spoke with this nice lady with an American accent who happens to work at the bar,  which was so cool as we were in a foreign country, used to being served by Italians. She explained to us that she got dual citizenship and moved to Florence from Texas. She absolutely loves it there and does wine tours/ bartends. She was super knowledgeable and nice!

I got moscato (I just can’t do bitter/ tasteless wines haha) and our dad met us and ordered a beer. It was a nice bonding time for all of us. But man, the heat this day was scorching.

It was not as big of a rush as we just had to take the train. It was overall a very nice day!!

I already know I’ll be back, thank you Italy🇮🇹🍝🍕😍❤️