me via text sms to bf while in italy: hello baby, we’re heading to florence/firenze tomorrow, you heard of the city?
bf: yah i know ah
me: wa so smart ah? then you know rome?
bf: ya roma right?
me: very li hai hor. then you surely dunno bolzano.
bf: ya i dunno. how you know i dunno?
me: cos bolzano got no football team ma. of course you dunno lor.
bf: ……..
TSK. MEN. so educated in football.
anyways,
onwards to the exciting-er part of the trip, our 7 day tour throughout many different cities in Italy!
we started day zero (half a day, after sending the rest of the choir off at the airport) right in the heart of Italy: in the city of Florence, also known as Firenze 🙂 (reminds me of harry potter!)
thanks to the other girls’ meticulous planning, mostly woon and aini, we’d already gotten most of our hotel and train bookings, so we checked into our super nice and cosy hostel in florence, and the four of us set off to start exploring the city!
a cab ride from the Florence airport to our hostel cost us a flat fee of about 25 euros?
our first encounter of how it feels like to narrowly miss death served on four wheels. hahahaha. everyone knows how reckless the Italians are on the road. actually the driver wasn’t half bad, but he sped about and made so many narrow bends in quick succession it was quite a ride.
room number!
we had to take a bus ride to our first stop: the church of San Miniato and let’s just say we traversed many treacherous roads to look for our bus, find out how to buy a bus ticket (you need to buy it from a convenience store or any vendor that carries bus tickets) and then dash back to the bus in record time before it left the terminal! managed to get on the bus safe and sound.
crossing the Florence Canal that meanders across the city, dividing it into two.
however,
smart ole’ us actually alighted at the wrong stop, waaaay too early.
and we ended up trekking along the road for a good 20-30 minutes, quite lost but we eventually managed to Eureka!
FOUND THE CHURCH!
you can read about the church here,
it’s a gorgeous church with beautiful architecture, and the Benedictines monks who live there sing Gregorian chants every evening as a part of their daily devotion. it’s quite a surreal experience to stand in there and listen.
gregorian chants
paintings on the interior wall
a beautiful mosaic masterpiece depicting Jesus and St Miniato to the right.
there’s so much detail in the ceiling, it’s pretty incredible.
unfinished base sketches on the wall
it’s obviously a tourist hot spot, and the view is magnificent.
Marissa and us, she happened to be spending the day in Florence too and we met at the church!
asked a random stranger to take a group picture for us. we did this so many times throughout the trip i was half afraid someone would run off with one of our cameras…
the sun was just about to set and the skies were beautiful
just gorgeous 🙂
we walked over to the Piazza de Michaelangelo nearby, to enjoy the sunset and also have our dinner!!!
guess what’s for dinner.
Mcdonalds! i’m lovin’ it.
more universal than English, apparently. you can probably find one in just about every city you visit worldwide 🙂
they have different stuff on the menu, but the fries tasted the same: full of sodium goodness and just very addictive! i’m hungry. it’s expensive there though, a meal will cost about 6 or 7 euros which is like 11 sing! D: we were so hungry after the long trek cos we didnt have lunch! even cold macdonalds (we actually da-baoed it before we boarded the bus!!!) tasted heavenly.
one more of the sunset
a random shot of me with a funny expression. i quite like it though!
say hello to Fake David
for anyone who’s been to Italy and doesnt want to pay money to see David inside a museum, there’s a copy of him at the Piazza in his full glory, balls included. he didnt seem VERY impressive though. but no one leaves Italy without seeing David, even if it’s a replica!
it turned dark pretty soon, so we took a bus back to Central Florence, and walked back to our hostel, home sweet home 🙂
bus driver was pretty hunky!
goodbye, David’s naked butt.
this is the validation machine on the bus, you have to stick your ticket in in order for it to be valid.
tired after a long day!
and finally, back to our cosy Ciao! hostel 🙂
and that’s just day zero!
we have many more days coming up. but i am soooo slow at editing the pictures, plus there’s so many things to settle since i got back that i’m probably gonna finish blogging the travel entries just in time to welcome the new year 🙁 but still, i want to share all the pictures and experiences, as well as keeping this travel journal for myself 🙂
for camera enquiries: i use the Olympus EP-1 with a Panasonic 20mm pancake lens.
and the pictures are mostly edited for color/contrast with Photoshop.
hope that helps!!!
*the khaki knit ladder tunic i wore in Siena will be up on TVD! possibly the next next collection :D*
akan datang!