Florence!

We woke up in Venice on Sunday and packed up our things in time to check out of our hotel. We ate breakfast there, a tasty mix of toast and cereal (nothing fancy). Katie also took the opportunity to re-stock her snack supply with a delicious snack-cake thing that was basically like a Swiss Cake Roll without the chocolate peely stuff on the outside or the cream on the inside. Whatever it was, it was good. While we were eating, we started to hear singing in the distance. What could it be? All of a sudden a parade comes right by the hotel window where we are eating! People playing guitars, lots of singing, and the carrying of palm branches. We had completely forgotten that it was Palm Sunday! We’re pretty bad about keeping up with what day it is at all. As this parade made its way by our hotel, there was a police escort for someone dressed up in a lot of red whom we could only assume to be a cardinal or somebody that was kind of a big deal.

After the parade made its way by, we had finished our breakfast and it was time to hit the road one mo’ time. We took a water taxi back to the train station where we activated our Italy/Spain rail passes and reserved seats for our train to Florence. After taking care of that business, we had about 45 minutes to kill before our train left, so we decided this would be a great time for some gelato! We each got a cone and sat down on the front steps of the Venice train station, soaking up that good ol’ Italian sunshine and watched the boats and gondolas pass by. Once it got closer to go-time, we hopped aboard the train and into our cabin, tossed our junk on the floor and passed out. Our train got going and eventually stopped in Bolgna for a long time where it picked up a ton of people. Katie was still snoozing but Rachael sat up unable to sleep, just in time to watch a family pass by our car. A little kid, no more than 6 years old, passed by and saw Katie snoozing and smacked on the window right where Katie’s head was resting, thus waking Katie up. Rachael found this hilarious. Katie… did not. Soon after, we had to readjust and clean up our cabin for our 5 other travel mates that also had seats in our cabin. One of the couples in the cabin with us had a little kid about 4 years old. Not knowing if he was going to be a crier or not, and already aware of Katie’s half-awake unhappy mood, Rachael offered Katie whatever food she had left in her bag to prevent the Katie monster from coming out to play, aka, using the 4 year old’s head as a soccer ball. Thankfully, the train ride with our new cabin mates proved to be uneventful and eventually made its way to our stop in Florence. Once there, we realized that we were actually at the wrong station and were one stop away from the train station we needed in Florence. We hopped on the next train and made our way to the correct station, Florence Santa Maria Novella. From there we walked to our hostel. Our hostel was sweet! It had its own restaurant, bar, and pool! You could even sign up for spa services! We dropped our stuff off in our room, unpacked a bit, met some of our roomies then went downstairs to grab some dinner. After dinner, we left to check out Florence. We walked around for a bit then found a gelato place. We can never turn down gelato! While ordering, we bumped into some of our roomies who were ordering some gelato too. After paying (way too much, might we add) we all headed out together to go and explore the town.

After checking out the Duomo, and the Ponte Vecchio bridge, we attempted to go and find the Synagogue Rachael had visited in high school. We got a little lost so we decided to head back to the Duomo. Once there, we found a cute little restaurant and the four of us sat down and split a bottle of wine. We were all feeling pretty sleepy after the vino so we decided to head back to the hostel. While walking, and feeling a lil’ tipsy, Katie was sharing with our hostel roomies our new philosophy on hygiene. We don’t shower or change our clothes everyday, but we make sure to at least change our underwear. We looked around and realized that we were being quite loud and that some people behind us must have heard our whole conversation. Katie said, “I hope nobody heard us or that they at least don’t speak English.” As she looked to the older gentleman behind us, he began speaking in Italian. Katie says “Ok good” (thinking we’re in the clear, that he did not understand our conversation) until of course, the man continues the conversation in perfect English. We’ve been caught! We got to talking and turns out that our Italian impersonator, Pall, is from Rhode Island and now resides in Riomaggiore and does tours around Cinque Terre. He gave us his website info (www.trekguyd.com) and told us to give him a holler if we make our way there. He says he usually meets up with people at the train station and over a cup of coffee talks about their budget, what they would like to see and experience and makes it happen. He can also help them find a place to stay. We definitely wrote down his info and bid adieu for the evening. We made our way back to our hostel and went to sleep.

We slept in until about 10:30am on Monday then went downstairs to grab some breakfast (which is served until noon - real good sign of an awesome hostel. They really know their clientele!). After breakfast we decided to check out where we needed to be that night for our Seder. We wandered through a market, checking out all of the touristy trinkets and eventually found the Chabad House in Florence and the Synagogue.

The Chabad House is just up the street from the Synagogue and Ruth’s, a restaurant where Rachael had some awesome hummus and falafel when she visited Florence in high school. However, we were too full from our late breakfast to check out Ruth’s and the Synagogue was closed on Monday and Tuesday because of Passover so we decided to start making our way back to the Duomo. While en route, we passed by a leather store. Katie was wanting to purchase herself a sweet leather jacket while in Florence so we went inside to check it out.

There we met Adam, who was delighted to meet us and help Katie spend her money. He says that his favorite part of his job is to help the women zip up their jackets (aye-oooohh!). Katie found the perfect jacket and wanted to check out some other leather goods to bring home as gifts (get excited, boys!). Adam obliged and cut her a really sweet deal on her jacket and the other items she got. He was totally hamming up his Italian accent the whole time (which we loved), crying “Mamma mia!” every so often. He told us that the first sell of the day brings him good luck and would not let us leave the store until we both gave his a kiss on the cheek. We loved hanging out with Adam and Katie loves her new jacket! If you’re ever in Florence, definitely go visit Adam and he’ll hook ya up!

We then decided it would be a good time to head back to the hostel, drop off our new goodies and to start getting ready for Seder. We finally had a chance to whip out the dresses we had brought with us!

We made it to the Seder and were the first ones there. We grabbed a seat but later moved to go sit with some other fellow Americans. There, we met Liz, who is also backpacking around Europe. Turns out Liz was staying at the same hostel as us and her travel buddy, Christine had stayed in for the evening. The service began and the leader of the Seder, a guy who could not have been older than 20, conducted the Seder in English and Hebrew. A Seder is a service and dinner conducted on the first and second nights of Passover where we tell the story of Moses and the Jewish people leaving Egypt. In Hebrew, Seder means “Order.” There are several parts of the Seder that contain different songs and traditions to commemorate Moses and the Jewish people leaving Egypt. There are basically two types of Jewish holidays: if the event was a tragedy and several people died, Jews fast, but if the event was successful and everyone lived happily ever after, Jews mark the occasion by eating and drinking - a lot. Rachael likes to think of Passover as a little bit of both, because once the Seder begins, you have to wait for what seems like an eternity before you can eat! It was an interesting experience and very different compared to the Seder Rachael’s family hosts every year (they start it off with a shot of Kosher for Passover tequila!). The songs and prayers were the same. It was pretty cool to sing “The 4 Questions” and “Dayenu” with so many different people from all over the world in Florence! Katie was very upset at this part, though. She wanted to know who that poor Enu was and why he had to die! She was kidding. “Dayenu” in Hebrew means "it would have been enough for us." They served some Passover classics such as gefilta fish and matzah ball soup (don’t worry Marty - yours is waaay better). Katie ate all of her gefilta fish but out of pure tradition, both Rachael and Liz refused to even look at it! Katie was severely disappointed in her Jewish buddies’ lack of adventure and didn‘t shut up about it for the rest of the night. Once the dinner portion concluded and the “After meal” prayers began, and we saw a guy stuff an egg and matza down his pants, we decided it was time for the 3 of us to head out. We headed back to the hostel and tried to Skype Rachael’s family before their own Seder began but gave up because the internet connection was pretty crappy. We went to bed and slept in again (why? Because we’re free!) on Tuesday. Rachael woke up in time to grab some breakfast from downstairs but Katie slept in until noon (Win!). We eventually got going and headed outside to see Florence when we both got hit with a big dose of exhaustion about 5 blocks from our hostel. So we went and had a quick but super-delish lunch at Antico Mercato (it’s on Via Nazionale near Santa Maria Novella - really good!) then came back to the hostel to do some laundry and nap. Definitely a good start to Passover! After napping we booked an excursion to tour Tuscany on Wednesday. We had only booked our hostel through Tuesday night so we had to go online and book one more night at our sweet hostel since the tour would not get back into Florence until late. We went and had dinner at the hostel then came up stairs and went to sleep to get ready for our “Special day in Tuscany!”

XOXO K&R