Day Twenty-Four - Florence, Italy

Day Twenty-Four – Florence, Italy

Well if you read anything in the news about a sudden upswing in the Italian economy, you can thank our group….because I’m pretty sure combined  we have gotten the Italians out of any recession they might have been in. Haha just kidding…but really all we have done is shop! We were all so tired of riding on trains and killing ourselves to see sights that we decided to take today just to shop. That may sound bad but we have a few days here in Florence and I mean part of the European experience is shopping anyways, right?

So shopping is all we did today. I guess you can say we’ve learned a lot about international marketing by haggling with these street vendors. It’s like China Town on steroids over here…I love it. Florence is known for having the best leather in the world so it’s amazing to walk down the streets and just smell all that real leather. We learned how to tell what’s real and what’s fake leather and so it’s kind of fun to figure that out. And haggling with them is so fun too – I wasn’t very good at it at first but Drew taught me his ways. Drew can get whatever price he wants it’s absolutely HILARIOUS watching him haggle!

It’s really funny too how all of these vendors will tell you the exact same thing…they all want to make you a “special offer” with a “morning discount” or an “evening discount” or a “student discount” and of course the offer is ONLY for you. They will tell you how beautiful and wonderful you are, kiss your hand, promise you nowhere is cheaper, and tell you whatever you want to hear. And you might be tempted to give in to their initial price. But no. Stand firm.  They mark up their stuff so much that you can often times get them to go down less than half of the original price.

I mainly just bought lots of souvenirs for the family today and I didn’t buy anything for myself (except for that beautiful Kate Middleton-like dress that I wanted so badly from last night!) because a good purchase here requires a lot of shopping around…most of the vendors sell the same things so you have to work to find the cheapest one.

Andy, Marley, and Emily and I ate a great little Italian café where the girls and I had some spaghetti – Andy went for the “New Yorker” pizza which had hot dogs and French fries on it…he insisted that it was good haha. And of course we have gelato with every meal. We also went inside H&M for a little bit and I was about to walk into the dressing room with about 10 things on my arm to try on when we overheard a customer telling an employee that her friend’s wallet had just been stolen in the store and she found another empty wallet on the ground so we high-tailed it out of there because we didn’t want to be pick-pocketed!

But that’s pretty much all we did today: shopped and ate gelato. I’m not ashamed, though. I feel like I’m getting the Florence experience!

Until next time,

MC