Notes from Abroad

We arrived in Florence pretty early, which was good because that meant that we could go on a bit of an “orientation tour” with the BusAbout guide to get our bearings. We went by the major sites – the Duomo, the various museums, etc. on our way to dinner for the evening.

BusAbout arranges some group dinners in each city where you can go and get a proper meal for a pretty decent price. This wasn’t offered in Rome, so when I heard about the Florence dinner I was intrigued, but after hearing the menu I decided to opt out. Alice mentioned that since it was a regular restaurant it might be possible to just order what we want off of the menu. She was right. Good call.

We both had the spaghetti pomodoro which was pretty good. A little too al dente in my opinion, but it was good enough. The portion wasn’t all that big, though, so we found ourselves still quite hungry. Since almost everyone else with us was getting the BusAbout 4-course meal we decided to venture outside to get some dessert or something. We’d passed a waffle and gelato stand on our way to the restaurant so we figured that’d be a good bet.

It was. So wonderful. Though it was far more expensive than we’d anticipated (dumb choice not to ask the price before ordering), it was worth every cent of that 9 euros. We sat on the steps of some church-type-building and indulged. Two belgian waffles sandwiching your gelato flavor of choice with hot nutella sauce poured over the top. Really, how can you resist?? I couldn’t.

So faces and hands entirely covered with nutella and gelato, we finished our waffles and decided to head back too the hostel – mostly because we really needed to wash our hands, but also because we’d planned to take a day trip to Siena the next morning and wanted to have an early night.

…the story continues after a brief day trip to Siena… read on :)

Tags: Adventures, City, Florence, Italy, Journal