Florence, Italy, Europe

Today started out on a very relaxing note. We figured that we would take the opportunity to go to the beach while we could. We’re not going to be on the coast much more after today until maybe the Amalfi coast later in the week. We also thought we would see if the day crowd in Chiavari was any younger than the one we saw last night. It wasn’t.

We went down to the beach at about 10am and found loads of chairs and umbrellas that were free to use for anybody who came along. So we snatched up a couple and enjoyed some sun for a few hours. Who am I kidding, I was in the shade the whole time, I have my Mom’s Scottish skin after all!

At about 2pm we decided to hit the road and head toward Florence. It was a relatively easy drive compared to yesterday as it was mostly highway. The only bad thing was how expensive the toll roads are in Italy. You pretty much have to take toll roads here, otherwise our 1.5 hour drive would have taken 4+ hours, but it ended up costing 16 Euros just for that drive! Ah well, we made it to our beautiful Hilton and settled into our room.

This Hilton is a few miles outside of the city center, so they offer a free shuttle into the center every half hour. We hopped on the 7pm bus, obviously searching for a place to eat. The front desk clerk at the Hilton (Luca) was brilliant and recommended a few places for us to check out in the city. He recommended that we check out the Piazza della Repubblica, so that’s where we headed first. We found a bar restaurant right in the square where we were able to eat and people-watch, so it was perfect.

We walked around Florence after dinner and ran into a bunch of sites that we would have to come back to see tomorrow. This is quite an impressive city, but there doesn’t appear to be a lot happening at night. We walked around for about an hour and we couldn’t find one bar or club that was open. Granted, it is a Sunday night, but I would have thought we would find something! We ended up going back to Piazza della Repubblica and had a drink there before we caught the last shuttle back to the hotel at 10:30pm. Perfect timing to watch the Patriots first regular season game online. Go Pats!!!