Florence: A city of Romance

Went out shopping and seeing the sights in Florence yesterday morning, and had an all around great day.

In the heat of the afternoon I hung out in my room with a beer and The Economist until my roommate, Ania got back from her sightseeing, and then we went and grabbed supper, gelato and walked around looking for the young people.

I'm not sure why we had so much trouble finding a good place to go out, but Florence is obviously not a city catering to the young club going crowd. So we wandered around in vain for a few hours, inobtrusively following young Italians who looked like they had someplace cool to be. No luck.

At about 10:30, Ania finally decided to take me back to the little Irish pub she was at a few nights ago and the moment we walked in the door, this big, blonde, friendly looking American guy envelopes her in a bear hug like a long lost sister, and we knew we had made the right decision.

Hung out with an Italian named Giuseppe who wanted to practice his english, and checked out the local fauna, and all the other hot tourists who came to what turned out to be, a local hotspot.

It's funny that in a city the size of Florence, the hotspot is smaller than most quiet Irish pubs back home, but we had a good time, the bartenders were funny, the drinks were strong and the conversation was flowing in Italian, English, drunken Australian and gibberish.

I left Ania talking to Giuseppe and an American and started chatting up these 2 very hot Albanian boys who had been checking me out for a good hour or so, and at about 2 or so, all 4 of us headed back to our hostel.

Ania met this group of 4 American boys while she was sitting on the curb out front of our hostel saying "Ciao" to everyone who walked past, and I left her happily chatting away to them, and went for a walk with the Albanians to check out Firenze by night.

I do really like this city.

Off to see the city of Lucca this afternoon, and then plans to meet up with the Albanian boys tonight at the pub again when I should probably be sleeping.

Holidays rock.